SI Archives Part 5: Back In The USSR
by Guardian54
Summary: Twenty years have passed since the end of the last World War (RA1), five years have passed since the Vietnam War ended, and now, the world will go to war once more. These are the events of Red Alert 2... The main Allied Commander is Mark Jamison Shepard, unrelated to the Shepard Sisters, but who will one day become the supreme commander of the Global Defence Initiative.
1. It Begins

A/N: Well, after a lot of quiet near the end of Part 4, we finally have something fun starting.

I KNOW RA2 TANYA IS A REDHEAD BUT YURI'S REVENGE TANYA IS BLONDE AND I WENT WITH THAT, REMEMBER THIS FOR THE FUTURE! (Also stated this back when I introduced her, and stated it repeatedly, but I still foresee at least one person questioning this.)

I just started playing _Borderlands_, and I really would like to know just when they got permission to rip off Varren in the form of the creature known as the "Skag". Other than the funny mouth structure (roaring blinds them, which is a bit stupid evolutionarily), Skags are just like Varren in my opinion. Brick reminds me of Grunt, Mordechai of Garrus, and Roland would be Vega (he is one of the squadron members who are sitting out the SupCom round of spawns, or at least sitting out of the squad list, but he most certainly will be seen in the continuation of this C&C series).

I know full well that the Harmony Shepard series began a bit rip-off-like, but I assure you that events will diverge significantly beginning in Second Year. I apologize that First Year was such a disappointment (really, the only important bits are probably Ch 10 and the last bit of Ch 9). Sooner or later, Harmony will snap due to her low Self-Control Rating and probably give Snape some cosmetic surgery via her fists, probably in the Shrieking Shack. She'll also be standing toe-to-toe with Dumbledore over Harry's living arrangements from Third Year onward. A final thing is that the Elder Wand will belong to someone else this time, and Dumbledore's death will be a lot less comfortable and planned, more of a drawn-out, bitter, hate-filled, painful affair.

* * *

Chapter 1: It Begins

_USA, November 11, 1981_

It began as a normal day.

The keyword was, of course, "began", for a phone call reached President Michael Dugan as he was handing a folder to his secretary "Mr. President? It's General Carville at the Pentagon on Line Five."

Dugan pushed the button on his phone for speakerphone "This is Dugan."

Over in the Pentagon Homeland Defence Bureau, which Carville had basically built from scratch himself after his glorified exile to a desk job after WW4 (not that he was sorry about going berserk on Stalin to punish the lunatic), alarms were blaring and red icons were showing on both seaboards of the United States, as well as many, many red symbols moving into Texas from Mexico "Mr. President, I'm afraid we have a hell of a situation down here…"

Dugan smiled at his secretary and put a hand on her arm, signalling her to leave "How bad could it be, Ben?" He thought it might be like the April Fools' prank call Carville had given him earlier that year, which had been quite amusing.

"According to NORAD, we've got Soviet aircraft coming at us from all directions and ground troops pushin' up through Mexico. I don't know how they snuck in on us."

By the tie Carville was finished Dugan's face had gone from a warm smile to an ugly grimace "You'd better double-check this with NORAD" This was about as un-amusing as that time a while back when NORAD detected a purported massive Soviet and SI nuclear strike inbound and it turned out to e a hardware malfunction. "This doesn't make any sense. I'll call the Kremlin."

"Will do." Carville stated glumly before hanging up.

Little did they know that if a lunatic trying to mind-control the world was trying to make a cover-story for establishing an installation network, he would do just about anything, including start a world war. Romanov, due to years of exposure, had slowly been worn down into taking Yuri's suggestions.

Dugan looked at the red phone labelled "Moscow", next to the phones for Tokyo and Toronto (Secure line to the Shepard sisters' offices), and picked it up. After a couple rings, an accented voice came from the other end "Da, Premier Romanov here."

"What's going on over there, Alex?" Dugan asked curiously.

"Why Mr. President, whatever do you mean?" Romanov chuckled.

"Alex, I… I have, um…" His secretary brought him the newest report of troop estimates and such "You're throwing everything you've got at us, Alex." Anger seeped into Dugan's voice "We're supposed to be allies, you maniac! I'm the one that put you into office!"

"LISTEN!" Romanov stated intensely, then muttered something sounding to Dugan like "gotta be careful there", followed by an angry "I am not your pet, Mr President." Many thousands of kilometres away from the White House, Yuri turned slightly to watch the man he had slowly corrupted go about his rant. "We Romanovs have our legacy to consider."

"I don't give a wooden nickel about your legacy. You call them off!" On the other side of the world, Romanov's face twitched several as the man who had led the USSR out of the shadow of the last war fought the presence in his corrupted mind "You call them off!" The battle didn't end in the original Alexander Romanov's defeat until Dugan said "You know we'll retaliate."

"Well don't be so sure, Mr. President." Romanov's voice stated. Yuri, next to him, picked up a telephone with several special add-ons that allowed localization of the target receiver and transmission of basic sonic attack patterns and psychic indoctrination waveforms over it. Romanov abruptly hung up as Yuri dialled out on multiple channels at once, to all the US nuclear silo installations' common command channels.

Dugan, hearing only the dial tone, put his phone down with shaking hands. He speed-dialled the Pentagon next.

"Sir?" Carville was chewing on a toothpick on the other end in agitation.

"Verification?"

"You betcha."

"Sweet mother…" Dugan took a deep breath in "it's time to hit back. Make it happen!"

"Yes Sir." He nodded to a technician who shifted the channel onto the emergency channel of all US armed forces. "This is General Carville. Soviet Invasion Confirmed. Execute Long-Charge-Zero-One-Zero-Epsilon-Delta-Zero."

* * *

_A Missile Silo, USA, November 11, 1981_

"Have Confirmation, Missiles Primed." The Missile Command officer replied after smashing open the glass alcove on the wall with the keys that would arm and launch the missiles.

"Armed!" The other silo officer stated, inserting his key.

The phone rang, and the senior officer picked up "Missile Command." The man was not expecting the sudden apparent pressure on his skull as his brainwave pattern was localized by Yuri's global data tap network and the psychic began focusing on overrunning the unprepared mind through the nearby amplifier arrays he had directed toward the main missile control facilities of America.

"Ten seconds to launch, open the missile silos!" The other silo officer yelled at him as he pulled out his sidearm. "Jerry, what? We have to open the silos. They're gonna explode under—" Jerry cocked his pistol. "The silo doors are closed! This is suicide!"

* * *

Romanov was hearing all this over Yuri's speaker-phone, or was it his mind? What followed was a long series of explosions as America's few remaining ICBMs, those missiles with enough range to strike Russia, were destroyed. Most had already been destroyed in the last series of treaties… Most of the US Navy's Missile Submarine network had also been neutralized, though only a couple subs were sunk, the rest were cut off from communications by killer satellites removing communications satellites and by a series of tactical commando strikes on American bases, hitting all naval bases with the authorization to call for such a nuclear response. "Is it done, Yuri?"

"No, Comrade Premier, it has only begun." Yuri stated eerily as he turned around.

The skies of both American coasts darkened as vast fleets of colossal Kirov Airships drifted over them like dark clouds. Air-raid sirens went off anywhere they existed as fleets of troop transport aircraft appeared seemingly out of nowhere to drop whole divisions' worth of Soviet paratroopers onto American soil. The transport planes had been housed in secret underground hangars all over America, and more than a few Kirovs had been assembled in those hangars too. They had used private road works for runways. It was a large fault of America's capitalistic system: On one's own land, one could build just about anything, and people always assumed you had the necessary permits if they saw construction hardware on-site. Once the Soviets bought the land and built the bases, well…

In the meantime, Hovercrafts transporting troops poured onto both coasts while Dreadnought-class cruisers fired volleys of cruise missiles at any militarily important or really even relevant targets. Typhoon-class Attack Subs engaged US Navy warships and Coast Guard vessels along the coastlines while tanks, Flak Tracks, and V3 Cruise Missile TEL (Transporter-Erector-Launcher) vehicles thundered over the now-flattened barbed wire fence originally intended to keep illegal Mexican immigrants out.

For Dugan, at least, the very next phone call made was to Toronto, but the lines had been cut by Soviet infiltrators already… that meant they had to operate without SI support for at least 24 hours, especially as SI was only at DEFCON 4 right now, and had only been so for a few minutes, starting after they detected the inbound Soviet craft. How they so thoroughly evaded NORAD, no one would know until years later. However, a popular claim was that it was "just like magic." Now, this was technically not true, since the technologies merely imitated psychic energy fields that provided some degree of radar stealth, but at the time many claimed it was magic until they were proven wrong.

* * *

_November 12, 1981_

For Captain Mark Jamison Shepard (who didn't like him last name very much as he was thoroughly unrelated to the leaders of SI), who had just finished the experimental "commanding officer training" for commanders to use computer interfaces to order troops around and receive updates on them, the day began almost normally, right up to after brushing his teeth. Then he was summoned to a video call from a "Lieutenant Eva" regarding the current situation. Behind her, a large screen was showing many X's across the US "Commander, good morning, we've successfully instituted the President's emergency Lazarus Protocol. I'm Lieutenant Eva, the Intel Officer assigned to your command. And since you're the only Commander left alive, I guess I'm pretty lucky to have a job." She pushed a button on-screen and showed news footage of burning buildings "It appears we have suffered a full-scale Soviet invasion. Nearly all our major cities are under siege and our forces are in complete disarray." Some beeping was heard over the transmission and Eva pressed her hand to her ear speaker, a sign she was receiving a transmission. "Please stand by, Commander, we have an incoming broadcast from General Carville at the Pentagon."

She tapped some buttons and the screen shifted to a feed from the Pentagon where Carville and some others were poring over maps. "I hope you're rested and ready, Commander, because as of 0800 hours you're in control of every satellite, base, tank, airplane, enlisted man, woman and child in the eastern United States. You answer to the President, and you answer to me. Your ops officer and vital lifeline will be the Lieutenant, your point man for this first mission will be Special Agent Tanya."

Tanya, well over age fifty but still looking to barely be in her prime on the video feed, turned around from a map of New York, her current location (though she was somewhat outside the city itself) "General, I hope the Commander is up to speed because we don't have time to waste."

"I'm sure Tanya has every confidence in you, Commander."

Tanya smirked derisively "Oh, you're sure? Well it's not your life that's on the line out here." She cut the connection.

"She's the best there is." Carville chuckled "But you'll get along better with the Soviets. You'll get started immediately, first stop, New York. The Lieutenant will give you the details."

Not long ago the Soviets made an amphibious landing on Manhattan Island and are using their ground troops to systematically take over the city. Another large Soviet transport fleet is inbound within several hours, carrying mostly vehicles and soldiers, they plan on using the supply base they've just established in the area to support quick deployment of their additional forces onto the mainland coast. Fortunately we still have a hold of Fort Bradley, but out com-link has been severed. If you can get Agent Tanya into Bradley she will re-establish the link and you can use the local production facilities to produce more hardware for your soldiers. Good luck, Commander."

The objective was to blunt the Soviet invasion and destroy the major but poorly-defended supply base the Soviets had scraped together in the area, thus reducing the pace of their invasion, given most of their really heavy equipment had yet to come ashore and needed more specialized facilities to support them. Mark estimated that destruction of the supply base could put the Soviets back at least two or three days, if not more. There were also four Dreadnought-class missile cruisers in the waters near Liberty Island, where Tanya's insertion point was going to be. Apparently the Soviets were trying to destroy or capture the Statue of Liberty, but the Patriot Missile battery on Liberty Island and the local guards were doing an adequate job of resisting, entrenched as they were.

Tanya was deploying herself via a "liberated" civilian speedboat coming in fast from New Jersey. Light flak batteries on the dreadnoughts swivelled over as they detected the approaching threat and began throwing up columns of water around the rapidly-approaching boat until it slewed around, presenting its broadside, and blew up under several seconds of on-target sustained fire. It was a few moments later that three C4 charges detonated along the flank of a dreadnought and the ship began to flounder. Dreadnought-class cruisers were designed to withstand damage ABOVE the water line, as Typhoons were supposed to take of water-borne threats and they had anti-torpedo decoys and active anti-torpedoes to defend underwater. Naval mines had been considered out of date by most factions for years, and the anti-torpedo bays could seek out the mines too so it wasn't a problem. They were _not_ intended to take high explosive charges, especially below the waterline and to three of their five watertight compartments. The ship began to capsize even as the next ship was C4-ed. The others tried to move, but the floating missile batteries were designed to be a cheap, easily deployed option for MCV warfare, so that meant, due to their decent above-water armour, they didn't have much in the way of speed. Tanya, having dived into the water as she turned her speedboat sideways, sank or began to sink all four of them before swimming off in a quick, powerful stroke toward the nearby Liberty Island to aid the GIs in defending it.

However, as soon as the paradropped Conscript mob had been mown down by Tanya's AR (Assault Rifle) and the guns of the GIs, a V3 tactical ballistic missile slammed into the badly damaged Statue of Liberty and it collapsed with a thunderous groaning of failing steel and twisting copper. It took roughly five minutes for all the GIs to report that they were alright (or report that others were KIA) and in those five minutes, Mark received news that the V3 launcher responsible had just been taken out by an air-strike, though most of the fighters available were occupied trying to wear down the fleet of incomprehensibly durable airships coming in slowly over both coasts. Maybe that was the whole point of the airships, to be a bunch of huge distractions, but they couldn't afford ignoring them given the huge bombs the airships could drop. Apparently they found Fort Bradley too small to divert an airship squadron to deal with… big mistake. Since the airships were most powerful in numbers, given their main defences against missiles and aircraft were onboard close-range flak guns and incredible durability, it was almost remarkable to find them quite vulnerable when alone to really _massed_ fire from conventional fighter jets or even ground batteries. The higher the yield of the SAM, the better the results.

Tanya and the GIs she'd just picked up were boarding some just-"acquired" civilian shipping i.e. every remaining workable ship docked at Liberty Island plus some boats Tanya's commando squadron had commandeered from the mainland earlier and ran in on the other side of the island while Tanya had been distracting/sinking the dreadnoughts. They sailed over to the location Mark designated for them, since most of the closer routes seemed to be blocked, according to the picture satellite recon was painting. He guided them through the battered streets of New York, helping a handful of GIs hold off two squads of Conscripts. Tanya was exhibiting her usual absurd kill power by taking down four soldiers per second with one bullet each from her AR, trading clips with inhuman speed when her current one ran out. Recon said there were three M60A1 tanks that had lost contact somewhere north of Fort Bradley, so Mark sent Tanya off there after she reached Fort Bradley and brought the data linkups back online with spare parts she had brought. He also had to coordinate putting GIs in the buildings surrounding a nearby Soviet paradrop zone after taking out the Conscripts defending it. They would be able to take out the Soviets as they dropped, and they did just that.

It took an hour for Tanya to locate and establish communications with the three lost, banged-up tanks north of the fort. They had held out against Soviet attacks since the invasion started, and were running low on supplies. The tanks, once they returned to Fort Bradley, with Tanya hitching a ride, reported sighting, along their way back, a serviceable bridge which could lead to the Soviet supply base nearby. After establishing sniper coverage of the bridge, Mark sent a squad of engineers to secure the bridge and search for any explosives the Soviets may have booby-trapped it with. It took some time to secure the bridge, but in the end he sent his GIs and his only three tanks over it, ordering the tanks to eliminate the V3 TEL vehicles terrorizing and wrecking New York. They also took out the lightly armoured machine-gun turrets at the front end of the supply base while the infantry advanced to take out the Soviet infantry and conquer the base. Ideally they could capture stuff that could provide good insight to the new, once-secret Soviet technologies.

Well, that was the theory. Reality tended to be rather different… what they found in the War Factory schematics was that the Soviets were fielding a high-powered 115mm, 55-calibre main gun (the power level of the gun was estimated by looking at the design to be only somewhat under that of SI's WTC-110-65 series, and even then mostly due to barrel length) on their new tank design, the T-75, along with composite armour and reactive armour technologies. M60-series tanks could be fitted with reactive armour, but they weren't designed with composite armour in mind. The conclusion was that the Allies, except the Germans, were at a disadvantage in protection, which was particularly horrible for French AMX-30 tanks but relatively okay with the heavily armoured British Chieftain tanks. The Allies, also except the Germans, were also at a disadvantage in firepower, particularly in sabot technology.

In other words, as soon as that operation was concluded and the engineers reported in, Carville threw up his hands and told the other surviving generals that "Fuck national pride, we need to buy some tanks from Shepard" _Just like I've been saying for the past twenty years, back then was more so that we could try to figure out their ceramic composite advances… but now we need them_ "to fill in the interim. Put more pressure on the damned design teams for anti-tank weapons, will you? Get them working on a new tank design, too. Damn it, at this rate we'll be starting from basically scratch, especially if they think SI's vehicle designs are too old to be worth imitating…" He had learnt the hard way that ordering a design crew to imitate someone else tended to not work out well, and he didn't have time right now to persuade hundreds of people to do something that significant of their own will.

He had just finished coordinating the amalgamation of several divisional units not yet engaged completely with the enemy (and which were still capable of fighting) into the improvised III Corps in northern Colorado when more bad news came in. A few minutes ago, at 0500, a large force of Soviet Tanks had been spotted near the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. That meant III Corps had to head south to engage, but they couldn't afford the Soviets finding all the secrets in that place, or killing all the cadets upon seeing the forces of III Corps approaching. Well then, Tanya had just reported back that their mission in New York had been successful, so he immediately sent her packing for Colorado Springs.

A few hours later, he was having a phone conversation with the President as Mark Jamison Shepard caught some sleep before having to take remote command of the forces in the field again. The soldiers and tanks in New York had effectively smashed nearby Soviet presences and supply stocks, but after losing a tank to Tesla Troopers in the city, they retreated. Every tank in that operational region was valuable, as I Corps had only a handful of tanks, fewer than the standard SI Field Division (which has a bit over 750 tanks).

"Mr. President, the Europeans will be asking for our help before too long." Carville held up a hand as Shepard's video link activated, signalling him to be quiet.

"We don't have a choice, Ben, I know that the guys you worked with last time are all retired by now, and you'd rather trust Shepard with our country's future than the Europeans, but we need to ask anyways, any help is invaluable at this time. Besides, Shepard doesn't keep very many division at home."

"…Yes sir, I'll take care of it." Carville put the receiver down, rubbed his eyes tiredly (he hadn't slept the previous night, coordinating several battles and smaller skirmishes as the assorted American units pulled together to form the three Corps-designated but nearly Army-sized units that could currently be used for offensives), then sighed. "It ain't right, we shouldn't have to beg for help from anyone." It seemed to Mark that he didn't like it based on the pure technicality of _begging_, and had no problem with _asking_. "Premier Romanov's got that whole continent shaking in their boots." He clicked a button on his projectors and turned it on before bringing up the appropriate file from his computer. "Romanov's sending his bulldog general Vladimir in for our airbases, his forces are romping through the country like an angry bull at a Texas rodeo." There was a desperate undertone to Carville's voice now. "At 0500 this morning, we detected a large force of Soviet tanks assembled near the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs." He showed a recon photo of said tanks.

"Sir, urgent transmission from Agent Tanya in the field!" It was just when Carville was giving Mark an aerial photo of the general base layout and such that Eva alerted both Mark and Carville to said transmission, just before patching it through.

The blonde was as to-the-point as ever "It looks like the Commies have captured Colorado Springs, General."

"Why the hell did you wait till now to contact us? We can't let Vladimir take that airbase!" _The research there is above even_ my _clearance level… Hannah once told me by back-room meeting that they were probably experimenting with psychic-based technologies there, but… still, can't let the Soviets find it, and they will given enough time in the area._

Tanya rolled her eyes "With all due respect, sir, we've been a little busy."

"Commander, get Tanya out of the hole she dug for herself and make her useful, would you? I'm sure she would appreciate it."

"The hell—" Carville clicked something on his computer "We seem to have lost Tanya's transmission." He said lightly, then grew serious "Go to it, Commander."

Mark nodded, then switched his attention to the combat situational display screens that rendered the battle area and forces involved, making war almost like a video game, _as if the bigwigs behind the scenes didn't already think of it as a game…_ he thought bitterly.

* * *

For reader information, to understand the geopolitical situation at the time of the events described by this Archive, we the authors have included this basic description of where the various units SI commands can be found in the world.

Current SI Theatre Deployments:

2 Field Divisions (1st and 2nd) in the Socialist Republic of Korea (Note: currently a hell of a lot more democratic than the military dictatorship down south). SROK SDF has four Armoured Divisions and eight Light Infantry Brigades active, with a small navy of a few Corvettes, some subs and many Patrol Boats (Attack Boats, basically, with assorted load-outs). Good air force. No Ballistic Missile Sites present, but does act as a supply harbour for some of the North Pacific Missile Submarine Fleet.

2 Field Divisions (3rd and 4th) in Palestine. Palestinian SDF has three Armoured Divisions and six Light Infantry Brigades active, plus a small navy. Strongest air force in the region, with the latest of the F-1958 Arrow series. Has Short-Ranged Ballistic Missile Silos capable of striking within about 1300 kilometres reliably (up to 1500 km depending on conditions) which is enough to hit anywhere in Iraq, most of Turkey, almost all of Egypt, and definitely anything closer than that. Mostly a deterrent though, and only installed because the Soviet Union had objected to putting Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile Silos there. It was well known that the IRBM was a bit of a blind spot in most missile defences.

1 Field Division (5th) in Algeria. Algerian SDF has two Armoured Divisions and four Mechanized Brigades (Light Infantry doesn't garrison a vast desert area well, and militia does most of the patrol duty anyhow). Small navy, more for anti-smuggler duty than combat. Acceptable Air Force.

1 Field Division (6th) in Cameroon, which has become by far the strongest industrial, economic and military power in the area, fielding three Armoured Divisions and nine Light Infantry Brigades. By far the best navy and air force of the area. Location of several Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile Silos. These, at 5500 km range, have enough range to hit anywhere within Africa and can strike within Europe as far as England (London is at the extremes of the warhead range). Can in theory strike at the Ukraine, anywhere in the Arabian Peninsula, and even western/central Iran and the easternmost tip of Brazil.

3 Field Divisions (7th through 9th) still stationed in Germany, scheduled for permanent recall in 1985 due degrading Wehrmacht-SI relations, particularly as the German Chancellor doesn't like Shepard very much after the Munich Olympics embarrassment, and Von Esling has retired. Retreat of these forces had been conducted in stages since the end of the Vietnam War.

6 Field Divisions (10th-16th) stationed in Canada. 15th and 16th Divisions have never seen real war, 14th Division has not seen a major war. SI currently possesses the fourth strongest navy after the US, Soviets and British, and a majority of it is stationed in Vancouver or Halifax. Two nuclear-powered Heavy Carriers are slated for launch in mid 1983 and commissioning in late 1984. Warship Construction has replaced most of the aging fleets already in all of SI's Client State arsenals and its own, but the Carriers have yet to be replaced.

* * *

_Near Colorado Springs, Colorado, November 13, 1981_

Tanya's eyebrows shot up at the sight of jetpack-equipped troops coming over a nearby cliff and joining them. Somehow, they had managed to, despite most scientists claiming it was impossible with current technology, create such hardware for the troops to use. Perhaps this was the sensitive technology that was supposed to be in the Air Force Academy? Well, according to her earlier recon of the captured Allied base, it should be easy enough to, with the insulated wetsuit she had, swim that big pond near the base to avoid the automated Sentry Guns the Soviets had set up along the main approach paths to the Academy. She could then sneak in over the side wall, kill the handful of guards on duty, and destroy the two Flak Cannons so that the "Rocketeers" as they called themselves could eliminate other defences, if applicable. From what intel they had, Sentry Guns weren't able to shoot at aerial targets flying at any reasonable altitude, it was just not within their design parameters. That was excellent.

Before she'd even told him what she thought, Commander Mark (so Tanya's mind, and most others for that matter, dubbed him to avoid mental double-takes regarding his last name) instructed her to do exactly what she'd thought. Great minds thought alike, it seemed.

Things went quickly after Tanya swam the pond, taking out Conscripts almost continuously with her silenced assault rifle and grenades before storming the main Academy building where she knew prisoners were being held. Thankfully, she managed to kill the Soviets before they could kill more than a few of the many hundreds of prisoners (most of the cadets had been rushed into the front lines already). The pilots were ordered to the Harriers parked on a nearby Air Force Command Post's four landing pads, and lifted off one by one, forming up before heading east on Mark's orders to take out some of the Soviet Ore Miners in the ore fields east of the base. The Soviets couldn't bring all their supplies with them, so they had to field-refine some ore and manufacture some—mostly machine parts—on their own, which was classic in MCV Warfare. SI thought this was incredible at best since field-manufactured hardware quality was usually rather lower than factory-manufactured gear. However, they too often moved units in the form of crates instead of complete goods just to save space, in fact, they had pretty much started that "some assembly required" trend of mobile warfare.

Unfortunately, Soviet War Miners were nimble enough to occasionally avoid some of the missiles thrown at them, mostly by using terrain objects, but the Harriers, still wrecked one of the abominable machines and damaged two more, which ran for home. The planes were under-loaded (only two air-to-ground Maverick missiles each) due to a shortage of live ammunition stores at the Academy and the sabotage of the Air Force Command Post ammo manufacturing facilities by the Soviets. For obvious reasons, most of the aviation hardware at the Academy was in the form of training shells and paint missiles. These were laughably ineffective against any real targets…well, with the exception of one Harrier pilot who managed to get a Soviet tank to ram and basically total a lightly armoured Flak Track APC. This was pulled off by firing paint missiles at it, which resulted in the tank manoeuvring wildly while the vision slits and external cameras were blinded by paint. Annoyingly, War Miners could survive a shot or two to the ore compartment with little trouble (though most of the ore load would literally "fall off the back of the truck", or rather "fall through the sides/back of the truck").

However, the ore fields were no longer covered from Rocketeer by the Flak Track that had just been destroyed by ramming, and it would take some time before another could be brought up from the Soviet base, which was much further from the field than the Allied base. The Soviet commander wasn't dumb enough to leave his ore field unprotected, but a happy coincidence resulted in the other Flak truck being broken down for repairs (it got whacked by a Maverick missile right on the flak cannon turret). Therefore, the Rocketeers were sent after the two Miners still operating in the area while they were vulnerable. The grenade launchers and submachine guns of Rocketeers were able to tear apart just about any target with sustained fire, after all.

While the flyboys were getting some exercise, Mark had deployed another Chrono Miner to help the one already at work reaping the ore mounds piled up near the automated drilling platforms west of the base. In the meantime, his War Factory was working hard to assemble tanks form the materials the Ore Refinery was providing. The specifics of how the rapid assembly of plain metal plates into complicated vehicles was done was highly classified, though many field commanders commented that it was "almost like magic", so Mark didn't have the clearance to know. Still, that didn't mean he couldn't build an army from it. It took several hours before he could assemble an attack force of several dozen tanks and headed eastward toward the Soviet base. Using flanking manoeuvres, cross-fires, and two anti-tank mine-layers from schematics Tanya had spat up from her connections (in other words, her cousins had given her some schematics to use if she felt it necessary to win a battle, though these schematics were half a generation out of date as per almost everything SI actually sold to other countries), he managed to destroy the Soviet presence in the area. Despite only being able to muster half the number of tanks in the field, even with assigning all the cadets with any vehicular training to tanks and engaging from relatively close range, Mark still managed to defeat the Soviet forces in the sector within a few short hours and evacuated all personnel safely over the next two days.

In the next couple days however, while Mark was taking III Corps southward, grinding through Colorado, Washington DC came under full-scale Soviet siege, forces from the southern (Virginia) and northern (Maryland) landing zones converging on the American capital city. SI was mobilizing its forces, with two Field Divisions included in the militia and National Guard (with a few Army, Air Force and Marine units) defence of the Washington/Oregon Line. The two Medium Carriers, ancient but still functional and well able to brush off even three or four cheap-deployment Soviet dreadnought cruisers even with both sides in range of each other, in the Pacific were conducting air denial as best they could against the massive armoured Kirovs that seemed to either distribute damage over themselves or simply use anti-gravity in addition to their massive propellers. So far they, along with the shore-based SRBM Defence batteries (in other words, extremely heavy surface-to-air missiles), were managing to prevent Kirovs from penetrating northward into Canada, but they couldn't shoot down more than a few of the ones invading America south of the Washington-Oregon Line.

It hadn't seemed to make much sense to install Short-Range Ballistic Missile Missile Defence batteries along a coast where the only Theatre missile launchers possibly in range were ships, but it turned out that inventing and installing ultra-heavy surface-to-air missiles, as TBMD, TMD (Tactical Missile Defence), and terminal-phase ICBM defence (this was the stated reason for the system's installation). Unfortunately, though every other type of missile could be defended against with reasonable reliability by SI's assorted classes of Missile Defence units and probably by their Soviet and American counterparts, the latest designs of Medium-Range Ballistic Missiles fielded by the Soviets could often, according to simulations, leak through the umbrella of all factions. It wasn't because the umbrellas sucked, it was because the overly expensive missiles were as good as their price suggested.

These missiles could strike at 1000 to 3500 kilometres, and the main reason they were so dangerous was because the current Soviet design was basically a souped-UP ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) with several additional thrusters ready to use even in the terminal flight phases. It also mounted suites of active sensors and could conduct evasive manoeuvres mid-flight, eve in the mid-course phase of un-powered ballistic flight. This made the kinetic kill vehicles used by all factions for ICBM mid-course interception inefficient at best, and it also made terminal interception times particularly short due to the missile's ground-hugging powered final approach. The missile was also equipped with an Iron Curtain system and capacitor, which meant absurdly large amounts of flak power would be needed to take it down, or multiple hits with very heavy AA missiles. Given consecutive hits were difficult on the hypersonic, low-altitude object (often less than one kilometre above ground level, approaching on an oblique angle of attack) were difficult at best, it wasn't hard to figure out what the problem was.

For those readers who do not know too much about the classifications, Theatre Ballistic Missiles can strike from 300 to 3500 kilometres, with Short-Ranged BMs hitting at under 1000 kilometres. Medium-Ranged BMs had ranges between 1000 to 3500 kilometres. Intermediate Range BMs could hit at 3500-5500 kilometres. ICBMs hit at over 5500 km. All Sub-Launched BMs are ICBMs. It is worth noting that every type of BM is capable of pulling shorter ranges (right down to, unfortunately for the Americans, self-destructing in the silo or on the launcher, be it by detonating their warheads or not).

Mark Shepard was happy that SI was helping the local militias tying up most of the Soviet forces on his right flank so that he could smash III Corps, which he had commandeered with Carville's approval, into their rear left flank after bypassing most other Soviet forces in the area and smuggling (This was one of his claims to fame) seven divisions' worth of men and materials onto the California coast. Carville had taken direct command of I Corps and was warding off Soviet attack after Soviet attack, using satellite communications to coordinate defensive sallies and external attacks southward from the New England region which was still under Allied control. He knew from what Shepard had announced that she was actively recruiting again and forming eight more Field Divisions (effectively half again her current total Army strength), with two more of the six divisions she had in Canada committed to battle already on the New England front, bringing her reserve down to only two divisions. Spec Ops and Black Ops cells throughout the countryside were organizing resistance movements and whipping militias into shape, inflicting casualties on the Soviets and slowing them down.

Secretly, Hannah had told her Germany garrison units to withdraw immediately. For lack of better terms, she soon, after getting an indignant phone call from the man, told the German Chancellor that "You were on me for so long to withdraw the rest of my troops, now you got your wish, see you later." She knew it wouldn't buy any favours with the Europeans but those three divisions were critically needed back home so she couldn't afford those niceties. The 7th through 9th Divisions' officers had been young men in the army back in World War Three, so they had seen war, but most of the soldiers were on four-year tours of duty and were fresh faces. It was time for them to all move back over the sea. The families of the officers might want to come too…

Those three divisions may not be the bloodied war machines they had been at the end of the last World War, but they would still be more than combat effective enough to inflict heavy losses on the Soviets. The T-75's current composite armour, from what reports were saying, was still not completely up to par with Generation 2.5 SI composite, let alone the Generation 3 they were using now. Of course, that might have had something to do with the total thickness of the interleaved ceramic tile layers involved too. The new Soviet gun also compromised cost with power well, with more than decent reliability and a fast autoloader, whereas SI had honed its WTC-110-65 series to maximize power and reliability at a slight cost to the maximum firing rate and with quite a high price tag.

The T-75 was equipped with a cheap, unimpressive engine that gave it even lower speed than the M60, but perhaps this was more due to the fact that the underside was armoured against mines and the top-side armoured against mortars and small bombs. That did not mean it was immune to those threats by any means, but it did help… and it slowed the vehicle down. This meant that T-1962s, even the earliest versions, or even T-1955s could run circles around them. However, it also meant that the T-75 could be easily manufactured in the field-deployed War Factories the Soviets had brought and their numbers could grow quickly. The Allies were determined not to let things get too out of hand though, which meant that they were sinking Soviet shipping as much as possible and trying to destroy the economies of Soviet bases on American soil.

It was a couple relatively quiet weeks (II Corps was fighting the Soviets in ) before the next bad news came in, the Soviets had advanced into Washington DC after using their new Apocalypse Tanks to break through the defences. The entire perimeter collapsed soon thereafter and President Dugan announced to a startled and alarmed America that "And in short order, we will all, young and old, pledge allegiance to our new leader, Premier Romanov of the USSR."

Apparently, unlike the paranoid garrison commander who had barely managed to scrape together a division of uncompromised survivors near the Jefferson Memorial, Dugan and Carville had dismissed the claims of psychic influence at NORAD as bullshit. Some say said garrison commander was crazy, but later he got a medal for ordering his troops to meditate and lecturing them on resisting voices inside one's head telling one what to do. Well, it was a lot less bullshit than what it sounded like, or so it seemed given the less paranoid or those who didn't take the possibility seriously didn't have time to put up resistance before being brainwashed. Carville's next video chat had him reclining in a leather armchair with his loafer-clad feet up on his desk and stirring his coffee mug with a small Soviet flag "Commander! Your perfoemance in Colorado and Oregon was pretty darn impressive, but things have changed since you've been away fighting. The war is over! What I've come to realize is that the Communists and us want the same thing."

Eva decided enough was enough and switched the viewing screen to show her operations room, with Carville's TV screen there blinking out as she cut him off. "I don't think we need to hear any more of that." She pulled up a schematic of some sort of tower-like device instead "It appears that the President and even General Carville are under the influence of a Soviet Psychic Beacon. It's a mind-control device developed by this man." She pulled up a photo of a freaky-ass guy with a moustache and goatee, wearing leather gloves holding a teacup and saucer. He was bald, with a weird tattoo on his forehead and wearing some sort of device on his head. Mark thought he wouldn't mind giving the man some cosmetic surgery a la nuclear warhead. "This is Yuri. Our intelligence sources now believe that Yuri and his Psychic Corps are the ones who were responsible for compromising our defences before the invasion. Right now the Soviets control much of the population in the area. Oh, don't worry, Commander, I'm not red yet." She winked at him with a smile, and Mark wondered momentarily whether or not she was flirting with him. Nah, it wasn't possible given the war, right? "Intelligence has not yet determined the exact location of the Beacon, and as a relatively passive device, it cannot control those whose minds are prepared. Due to these facts, you can be sure it will be heavily guarded by the Soviets. I can link you to all the unaffected troops in the area, use them to destroy the Beacon. With the Beacon destroyed, the President will be free to secure to a safer location."

"Do I have any back-up? Is SI sending anything to help?" Mark asked.

"They are grinding their way into the northern Soviet attack force, but they cannot sustain their offensive for long, they can only keep a corridor open through the air-space with many SEAD" That meant Suppression of Enemy Air Defence "sorties and periodic tank sweeps. It will allow us to evacuate the President to the north, but they do not expect to be able to be able to sustain combat for longer periods of time, they simply do not have sufficient forces, even at their expected kill-to-death ratios, to handle all the Soviet forces in the northern sector without depleting themselves into combat ineffectiveness. Our northeast sector forces are still recuperating from the last Soviet offensive against them. You're on your own for this one. Fortunately, though, there are still scattered groups of survivors in the city and the garrison the local commander managed to round up at the Jefferson Memorial is not exactly small."

"Alright, see you later, Eva." Mark sighed before he got the tactical linkup and began directing his forces. This would be a long, hard slog, especially since the troops were forced to mow down the civilians the Soviets were sending flooding toward their base, and that meant ammunition supplies were a bit difficult to deal with.

* * *

A/N: Must use "Ain't no rest for the wicked" sometime, perhaps in a song-fic (at least, the first chapter will be a song-fic) set in the future of this series?

If you want some RA2 in-game numbers (and reality figures) to compare the seven main tanks in the war, here they are (Tank Destroyer is modified, T-1955/1962 latest models practically made up from scratch, note that reality does not yet follow game mechanics, and things are NOT balanced!): Note that in reality all the tank guns can pull precise range up to 3-4 km, max can go well over 20 if a hill is used for additional angling and fired in artillery mode

Game M60A1 Grizzly: 700$, 300 HP, 65 Damage, 60 Cooldown, 7 speed, 5 range, 8 sight, 0:28 build time.

REALITY M60A1 Grizzly: 48 km/h on-road, 35 cross-country, 105mm gun fires every 6-8 seconds (manual loading). 2 general-purpose machine-guns, 1 coaxial.

Game T-75 Rhino: 900$, 400 HP, 90 Damage, 65 Cooldown, 6 speed, 5.75 range, 8 sight, 0:45 build time.

REALITY T-75 Rhino: 45 km/h on-road, 32 cross-country, 115mm gun shot per 4 seconds. Two heavy machine-guns, one coaxial.

"Game" (Damage modded from 100 to 130 per shell, price and time up) T-80 Apocalypse: 2000$, 800 HP, 130x2 STS (Surface-To-Surface) or 50x2 STA (Surface-To-Air) Damage, 4 Speed, 5.75 range ground, 8 range air, 6 sight, 1:20 build time.

REALITY T-80 Apocalypse: 30 km/h road, 21 cross-country, 140mm cannon volley every 6.5 seconds. Grizzly _will not_ survive alpha strike unless reactive armour equipped. Two external heavy machine-gun mountings remote-controlled from inside.

"Game" T-1955: 1200$, 550 HP, 100 primary damage, 60 cooldown, 9 speed, 6 range, 9 sight, 0:60 build. Secondary damage for 40mm gun is 15 (different damage type, more anti-infantry), 20 cooldown, 5 range, or for flamethrower effectively 1 damage with 1 cooldown, 1.5 range.

REALITY T-1955: Up to 75 km/h on-road (or tracks will be damaged), 45 km/h cross-country. 110mm cannon per 4.5 seconds (auto-load). 40mm gun can fire 5-round volleys at an interval of 2 seconds (manual load by gunner) and flamethrower is continuous attack. Two heavy machien guns, one coaxial.

"Game" T-1962: 1000$, 400 HP, 100 damage, 60 cooldown, 9 speed, 6 range, 8 sight, 0:50 build time.

REALITY T-1962: Up to 72 km/h on-road (without track damage), 50 km/h cross-country. 110mm cannon per 4.5 seconds (auto-load). Coaxial and topside heavy machine guns.

"Game" (health-up, time-up Tank Destroyer) T-1965: 900$, 600 HP, 150 damage, 70 cooldown, 5 speed, 5 range, 8 sight, 0:45 build time.

REALITY T-1965: Similar speed to T-1962, 150mm cannon per 5 seconds, two top-side remote-control machine gun turrets, can punch through any known tank, even the front armour of Apocalypse tanks if firing at just about any angle of depression.

REVIEW!


	2. Absolute Madness

A/N: **MARK JAMISON SHEPARD** is the name of the **first Supreme Commander of the Global Defence Initiative**. Why did he get the job and get fired later on? POLITICS.

I just had an enlightening realization as to the implications of multiple "Operational Crews" active at the same time (e.g. Shepard's Crew and Raynor's Crew). I also figured out which timeline the multiverse originally could have chosen most of the StarCraft crew from: Tychus = Brick, Raynor = Roland (come on, Roland reforms much of the Crimson Lance (Red = Sons of Korhal) forces on-planet into the Crimson _Raiders_! I know Borderlands ripped off StarCraft but let's say it's the other way around…), Kerrigan = Lilith (Nova and Matt are probably the BL 2 Siren and Soldier respectively). The only problem is the lack of Mordechai, i.e. male Ghosts.

**Apologies for taking so long to update this story.**

* * *

Chapter 2: Absolute Madness

_USA, Late November-December, 1981_

While building up his armoured forces and self-propelled artillery, after digging his troops in at the approaches to his base, Mark received a transmission from Eva bringing his attention to a brave group of survivors who had scraped together a squad near the Smithsonian and managed to piece together a working radio from what they had available to them. After demolishing several buildings garrisoned by the Soviets between the survivors and his base with Rocketeers (the Soviets had stupidly not had enough forces still available to park Flak Tracks all over the place), he sent his armoured forces, complemented with IFVs complete with combat engineers (his clearance was not adequate to know how the transformer panels of IFVs worked) to pick them up.

It was several hours of gruelling urban combat later that they managed to capture a Soviet outpost and received the weak signal from another squadron of survivors from the original defences of DC. They had been stranded near the Lincoln Memorial, with three working M60A1s, two old-fashioned M60s, and three IFVs, with combat engineers in two of them. Fortunately, the captured Soviet base was near the survivors and the vehicles crossed over to Allied lines quickly and safely. Using Harriers to help clear the way by blowing apart the ammunition dump near the main Soviet base's War Factory worked after the armoured strike force began to bog down in the assault toward the White House past the Washington Monument and it began turning into a grinding match. That immediately upset the balance and a second flight of Harriers contributed significantly to the armoured battle by taking out quite a number of Rhino tanks and even some Apocalypse Tanks.

The mixture of American-piloted Rhino and Grizzly tanks quickly rushed into the Soviet base, overrunning it in short order, and though he was suffering severe losses from the handful of Apocalypse Tanks in the area, Mark methodically destroyed every Soviet unit present and demolished all their facilities. Those Apocalypse Tanks had been some of the survivors of the expensive breakthrough that put the Soviets into DC, and had been whittled down in numbers before the main armoured battle by Harriers.

While a detachment of his army was levelling Soviet structures, Mark's main force ploughed on to overrun the remaining Apocalypse Tanks guarding the Psychic Beacon. The Soviets had foolishly chosen to put it in the most obvious spot, a short distance in front of the White House's front lawn. Before the President boarded the evacuation chopper, he sent a transmission to Mark "Commander, after this is all over, I'll promote you to… whatever you like. Thank you." They had, after all, saved almost all of America's classified information from the Soviets, since even with mind-control the President and senior officials, military or otherwise, weren't _that_ prone to talking.

Mark rolled his eyes at the one-way transmission, what a joke… well, it was good to see the President still had a sense of humour even after that mind-control fiasco. He continued to fight the Soviets in DC for the next couple weeks, but in the end had to retreat his forces back across the Potomac to the defences surrounding the Pentagon. Fortunately or perhaps unfortunately, the Soviets had forgone conventional artillery for a purely missile-based approach. This was fortunate as the warheads could be intercepted mid-flight, but it was also annoying as radar-based counter-battery fire was less certain (especially if the missiles were non-ballistic) in its targets. The spy satellite network was down, so they couldn't trace the missile origins precisely by thermal blooms characterizing launches, at least not for such small missiles. Longer-ranged Ballistic Missiles however, they could still detect just fine.

It was only in almost mid-December that Mark spoke casually once more with Carville. The situation of the war was still as bad as it was before. The Pentagon Garrison was still holding firm, and was in no danger of collapse with ample food and water stores, plus the ability to manufacture the hardware of war on-site. The New England Front had stabilized with the addition of two full-force, relatively experienced Field Divisions from the three that SI had withdrawn from Germany. Shepard was still holding three of her own divisions (one of which had experienced officers and non-coms) as a reserve in case the Soviets advanced further across the Plains of North America, despite them already having reached Illinois. Canadian Army troops, four Divisions' worth, equipped with T-1962s and some T-1965s, were helping hold the line in Idaho and North Dakota. The American government's surviving members had set up a government-in-exile in Canada, and were currently being guests in Ottawa. Carville only had one minor complaint about this arrangement… or rather, the number of bovines involved in it.

"I don't know what the flying fuck happened back there, Commander, but as you can see we're getting sent right here… I know, Canada, not a bad place to be but still, more cows up here than people…" Carville lost the half-sad look and donned a serious one "Well, let's get to work. The Lieutenant will fill you in."

Eva's briefing ran as follows "It looks like General Vladimir just decided to hit Chicago hard. Shepard is throwing her three reserve divisions southward across the border near the junction of Lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron. They are accelerating the training program for the eight currently in training. They'll be combat-ready in late February instead of late March by the new estimate." Though there had been many recruits, screening them took a bit of time and so did relocating them all to the training camps, some of which had been hastily MCV-manufactured. "The nearest available American Forces are the bulk of II Corps, currently fighting in Michigan. Intel suggests an amphibious assault across Lake Michigan would work best. Well, I guess there's a first time for everything… good luck, commander."

Rocketeers managed to eliminate the foolishly unguarded recently-erected artillery installations on the ends of the harbour's piers, and quick-deployment "Destroyers" (little more than well-armoured gunboats equipped with VTOL UAVs able to drop anti-submarine munitions and anti-torpedoes to avoid sinking by Soviet Typhoon Attack Subs) kept the beachhead open as hundreds of Amphibious Transports charged the beaches loaded down with almost all of II Corps. If the Soviets wanted Chicago badly enough to focus most of their Apocalypse Tanks on breaking into the city, there had to be something of value here.

Or rather, the Soviets wanted a centralized location in North America to build their Psychic Amplifier, which fortunately for the world needed time to charge and worked the way the Psychic Beacon did, passively. Those prepared for it could endure its effects, at least in the short term (i.e. days, which was how long the Psychic Beacon in DC had stood before being levelled), but no long-term study had been done yet. Still, it was a supreme threat as most of America didn't believe in psychic technology yet. Fortunately, north of the border people had long since learnt to keep their paranoia active if SI announced something was dangerous complete with the official "DEFCON Stamp" as most people termed it. In other words, they went from DEFCON 3 to DEFCON 2. Now, SIN (Shepard Independents News) often said some pretty nasty things about corrupt politicians or unjust conflicts, but if something was serious enough to be DEFCON-Stamped openly on SIN, then, well, it was, by current public opinion, extremely stupid to not take it seriously.

SI's armoured spearhead ploughed its way in from the north and drew away all the Apocalypse Tanks involved in the overrun of the city. Militia and police forces were engaging sympathizers and Soviet forces in open urban warfare throughout the city, but Mark couldn't afford helping them since he had to make his way to the Amplifier as quickly as possible. After establishing a beachhead base he rushed his armoured forces, supported by Rocketeers, into the main Soviet base in an all-out offensive while Harriers prepared for a suicidal attack run on the Amplifier and Destroyers charged the small man-made island the Amplifier had been built on. It was a mere hour from activation when T-1955s and T-1965s broke through to the northern coast of the river it was in the middle of and began pounding the installation at as high a firing rate as they could manage with their autoloaders. The tanks were staggering their ranks along the far hillside of the river valley, so that the 1955s were actually firing over the tops of the 1965s. 150mm and 100mm howitzer shells also rained down on the heavily armoured installation, along with 150mm rockets from rocket artillery trucks.

At the same time, American Quick-Deployment Destroyers were using their 155mm naval artillery gun turrets (lateral traverses were so small they were almost casemate in nature, only enough to compensate for the sway of the glorified gunboat on the water) to fire upon the building, with broadsides of 200mm shells being delivered by the SI Frigates parked some distance outside Chicago harbour. These warships had moved into Lake Michigan when the Soviets got halfway through Illinois in case they were needed. The Allied aircraft headed out eastward over Lake Michigan to meet up with several squadrons of Canadian Air Force F-1958s for the attack run down the river valley toward the Amplifier. American tanks and artillery were mostly occupied keeping the Soviets from flooding into the valley from the other bank, but they took as many shots as they could.

The structure of the Amplifier was outlined constantly in explosions for several minutes. Its armour was being cratered or dented in dozens of places per second, heating up and glowing softly as its Iron Curtain Damage Distribution System finally collapsed. It was about time too, as the tanks on the north coast had begun running out of ammunition—most had begun at around half ammo due to fighting their way through to the valley—and were shuffling their ranks to bring fresh vehicles up while allowing the ones working overtime just now to move back to the ammunition vehicles. The visible flak screens of Soviet units still hidden among the trees at the bottom of the valley highlighted the howling arrival of the Harrier and Arrow squadrons.

The air wing fired off a vast volley of heavy air-to-ground missiles, including improvised ones due to lack of available missiles, into the installation. The improvisation had resulted from an inadequate supply of Maverick missiles and the fact that excess Rocketeer jet-packs were on-hand along with a number of heavy bunker-buster bombs. The packs were capable of autopilot, had very lenient programming parameters, and had a maximum thrust output several times higher than its usual use allowed, so it still allowed guidance, however rudimentary, of the heavy bombs. The Harriers dropped off the bombs before pulling up and going for altitude like the Arrows already had ahead of them—dropping all their munitions earlier and throttling to maximum allowed the Arrows to _vastly_ outpace the Harriers—only to run into a screen of flak. This was from surviving Soviet flak troopers in the buildings on the south shore of the river.

Flak troopers were equipped with recoilless rifles that served well as low-level air defence with their fragmentation warheads and radar proximity fuses. They were also effective against lighter armoured vehicles despite only being issued one type of round, which was incredible to most other factions (Even SI's 40mm grenade launchers had flash-bang as a shell type) but apparently was a good cost-cutting measure. They were highly effective against infantry and aircraft, but pretty much useless against heavier armoured opponents. In this case, three Harriers and two Arrows began losing flight stability, trailing smoke and in two cases flames. It was worth noting the difference in durability and armour protection of planes built with vertical takeoff and landing in mind (the Harrier had to cut weight massively) and those that required an airstrip. There had been after all nearly twice as many Arrows involved in the sortie (36) as there had been Harriers (20) and they were pretty well mixed in terms of the units that received flak hits or damage.

The pilots aimed their aircraft at the Amplifier as the jets began death spirals and ejected, or at least those still able to eject did. Of the three chutes, only one belonged to a Harrier pilot as the others had been too damaged to eject. Only one of the pilots, an Arrow pilot, made it to the ground alive though due to Soviet flak fire. He wouldn't live much longer though… The Psychic Amplifier had finally had enough with how many times it was being punched through now the Iron Curtain System was down for the count. The structure, now aflame, began to sag with the groaning of failing metal and, with a final coordinated broadside from the four Frigates east of Chicago hitting it with twenty out of the twenty-four 200mm shells fired, collapsed in on itself. Prototype Psychic Waveform Sensors (why the mission was so urgent and so rushed in terms of preparation in the first place) had detected the signal weakening continuously earlier as the building took damage, and now it had cut off completely.

"Commander, they never saw us coming, that was splendid." Eva told Mark with a smile.

Then her face was replaced by a considerably uglier one, Vladimir's face, on Mark's transmission screen. "Hear me, you foul American phantom or whoever you are, you can work your armies like a puppeteer all you want, but this is my play. Here is the city that you have saved." He pointed at something a bit below the screen "Without the Psychic Amplifier, which you so irrationally destroyed, I no longer have much use for it. Behold the power…" his face contorted like a lunatic's "OF MOTHER RUSSIA!" He jammed his finger down on something.

A brilliant flash was followed by darkness on most of the feeds Mark had, and the battlefield tactical overviews from satellites and other units in the region showed a rapidly growing nuclear fireball from the location of the Psychic Amplifier. The estimated warhead yield kept growing. Ten megatons… twelve megatons… thirteen… it settled at a good round number, fifteen megatons. Mark sat in numb silence. He had just lost nearly a third of America's remaining military, the entire remaining population of Chicago, and a third of the available land forces that their largest ally (literally and, at the moment, militarily) had available. He got a transmission from Hannah Shepard, the black-haired woman's normally charming features twisted into a snarl "Let it be known to all the peoples of the Earth that Soviet General Vladimir Gregorovich is to be left for me and Mark Jamison… Shepard" She frowned a bit at the name before moving on "To bring to justice personally. If possible, he is to be captured alive, if not, he should be in as much pain as possible when he is killed. The man directly responsible for the first piece of nuclear warfare conducted by humanity must be punished for this vast crime."

She then paid specific attention to him "To Commander Mark Jamison Shepard of the Untied States of America, I applaud you for destroying the Psychic Amplifier in a timely fashion, preventing me from needing to launch a nuclear strike on Chicago to destroy it and prevent the mind-controlling of a majority of the North American continent." Given how people were paranoid these days, it would be a minority that would be initially hit by the activation and overwhelmed, but since it was expected to be a majority of people living in a majority of North America this was not a lie per se. Besides, most politicians and militaries did far worse in expounding possible consequences to citizens, right?

* * *

A/N: Yeah I just used the last name of Vladimir's actor for his Russian "last" name…

* * *

_Europe, January-February, 1982_

It was late January when the Europeans stopped bickering with themselves and pulled their heads out of their asses far enough to offer America assistance conditional upon the elimination of several Medium-Range Ballistic Missile silos near the Polish border with the USSR. The first priority was to move Tanya over to Europe, which involved decoy convoys, standard airline flights, and decoy airline flights. The reason why it was more complicated than strictly necessary was, well…

"Good afternoon, Commander, the President and the European Council are ready for you." Eve told Mark one cloudy afternoon after yet another complicated operation raiding Soviet supply routes and slowly pushing the Soviets out of Illinois. "Please hang on while I put you through."

"Ah, Commander, I'm glad you could make it. The European Council and I have been discussing an aid package."

The fat German Chancellor now in office doomed himself by raising his finger and pointing out something he should have kept quiet about given Jane Shepard was in the tele-conference "The _possibility_." He would be evicted from office almost immediately by public uproar later in the war once Germany was invaded and the conference was conveniently "leaked" to the public. Sometimes, the simplest moves were the best to use, and by far the most reliable.

"…Possibility of an aid package for the US. The nuclear attack on Chicago seems to have sparked their interest." Dugan continued on, though internally he was seething.

"Do not think us indifferent to your situation, Mr. President, but for us, the United States is _very_ far away." The French President said, proving he was indeed quite retarded, given he didn't seem to understand that if America fell the Europeans would be next to bear the brunt of Soviet attacks, assuming SI hadn't seen fit to launch a global thermonuclear war to end it all for good by that point, which was highly unlikely if they were losing badly in North America.

Dugan sounded rather sharp when he spoke again "Commander, the point is that we've agreed to exchange Agent Tanya's services on this operation for soldiers and supplies from the Alliance."

"If the conditions are met, I am prepared to take command immediately." The Frenchman said.

"Now you just hold on a sec, this is my operation." Tanya shouted from where she was patched into the conference.

"We all need leaders, agent, non?" The French man had the balls to smirk when he said this.

"Yes, and you are not worthy. One more word, Monsieur…" Jane Shepard snapped at him, though he was already many words beyond doomed and more toward the "evict from office, then arrange an 'accident'" part of the spectrum.

"We have no time to train this guy, Mr. President, you want my men, you get me Mark for TACCOM." Mark's eyebrows rose at that. It seemed Dugan had suspected this might happen, hence moved him over…

Dugan chuckled "If you're onboard, Commander, I think you've been drafted. The Prime Minister will give you the details."

Margaret Thatcher spoke for the first time since Mark patched in with "The objects you see in the second photograph are Soviet missile silos, as you can see, Commander," The maps showed that they were on the border of Poland and the USSR "they are a bit too close for comfort. I believe Romanov's intention is to keep us out of your war."

"Our men will go nowhere until this threat is eliminated." The German Chancellor emphasized the last word, which, Jane mentally noted, was what would happen to him soon enough.

"Take care of these silos, and this war may be close to an end." Dugan said seriously, though they all knew that to be a lie. The war had a long, long way to go yet. "We're counting on you, Commander!"

And that was why Mark had been moved overseas, by ship (completely different from the expected airlift that the Soviets were trying to intercept) along with Tanya's assault squadron. Now, they weren't exactly bad company, but if there was one thing that made them not Mark's idea of fun co-workers it was the peanut gallery commentary. Sure, he might have ended up draped over Tanya after being soundly trashed (literally) in a drinking contest he'd unwisely accepted from her, but that was no reason to comment about inappropriate relations. Yes, she'd thrown him over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes and taken him back to his room after he'd finished puking his guts out, then made sure he didn't vomit again in his sleep and choke by moving the chattering band of spec ops troops to said room, but the comments were getting annoying.

* * *

Archivists' Note: Tanya Adams found this claim highly amusing later on when she read her husband's journals.

* * *

They were, on the other hand, nowhere nearly annoying enough to put him off socializing with "the guys" (this was a technically very inaccurate term, but no one gave a shit), although he noted that they couldn't be good for his long-term sanity. They'd found a lot in common chatting about everything and nothing out of sheer boredom on the long boat ride. It was also fun spending time with a certain special agent just hanging out, or sometimes playing video games, although Mark never realized that it was fun until years later.

It took until mid-February for the team to fully get into position, in the meantime, Mark was busy going over plans with Tanya since they couldn't afford allowing the missiles to launch. Fortunately, the Soviets only had two main silo complexes within range of most of Europe, preferring to centralize their control, and both were in the same general area, positioned to cow the Europeans into submission. There was a Battle Lab nearby in another fortified compound that had the main long range secure data transfer equipment, so if they could get a team of Spies inside they could make sure the Soviets didn't see the main assaults coming.

And of course that was what they had to do. One of the first attempts to drop in a squad to establish a base of operations resulted in the transport plane being shot down, so they decided to insert via stealth chopper, flying across the Polish-Russian border after getting Polish rebels to aid them.

They only had three fully-qualified spies available, so they had to be careful about this… They crept through the countryside, avoiding Soviet patrols, only really having to drop a patrol when they neared the Soviet base and the dogs seemed about to detect the spies. Apparently not having real Soviet Army gear complete with the smell of cigars and vodka made their Conscript disguises not work out too well against dogs. The solution was simple: Strip the corpses of the dead conscripts and don the clothes for the right smell.

Mark sent one of the spies forward to sabotage the enemy power plants, by hacking into the power distribution of one power plant, he should be able to shut down the whole underground wire power grid of the base… And he did, as the Tesla Coils guarding the front of the base shut down, at least for now. The spy had estimated he could take the power out for about five minutes before they could catch the problem and neutralize it.

Now, if there was one thing to be said about Prefabricated buildings… in most cases, their foundations were not very extensive, so the series of explosions from the fuel barrels stashed next to a Tesla Coil (what the hell was wrong with the Soviets?) managed to destroy the tower by uprooting it and laying it out on its side.

They managed to save the spy in the Tesla Reactor by clearing out the base quickly, charging in guns blazing, using demolitions charges to wreck the Tesla Coils and locking down the war Factories so that they couldn't assemble any vehicular support for the Soviets. In the confusion of heavy close quarters combat three of Tanya's team members were injured and two killed, but by the time the dust settled the whole Soviet base had been cleared out of its hundreds of Conscripts and handful of Tesla Troopers. Tanya's inhumanly high accuracy was more than enough to take them down through the weak points of their armour with battle rifle AP rounds, while Conscripts tasted the even higher reaction time of her pistols from her left hand. Mark on the other hand was highly impressed at how Tanya could fire a Battle Rifle accurately one-handed, as if she was beyond human, while he was methodically taking them out one after another using an SI-built Assault Rifle.

Now, maybe they could hack into the War Factory Systems and repurpose them instead of just disabling them by cutting their power supply… Mark knew that an engineering team scheduled to drop in soon had crash-landed on a plateau southeast of the Soviet base. After scaling the barbed-wire-topped concrete walls and climbing down the other side, leaving handholds and ropes, most of the assault squadron ventured up the plateau. Bullets made good wire-cutters when stealth was unnecessary, or so Mark had remembered (he'd been brow-beat out of the un-stealthy method in West Point) when Tanya used her guns to cut through the wires.

After broadcasting from Tanya's radio calling for the crash survivors, they found them "Good to see you sir, we're freezing out here." They had apparently moved away from the plane after the crash, a wise choice given half the thing had blown up. The best thing? They'd brought two Engineers with them, enough to rewire the computers in both War Factories and force them to assemble some Rhino tanks for the assault team to buckle up in.

That was, once they fixed the recently-disrupted electrical grid of the base. This proved to be a pain in the ass. One of the Spies soon found the coordinates for the camouflaged silos in the Battle Lab's data storages, but they were still busy cursing and monkey-wrenching the Tesla Reactors back to functionality so that they could use the few tank crates stashed in the War Factory…

That eventually resolved itself after they got the Tesla Reactors back to functionality and re-established contact with the higher-ups. The Soviets had put both nearby silo outposts with only land-line connection to this installation and no sufficiently powerful radios to get a satellite uplink. This meant that after fooling their way past the base one tier up from the Battle Lab base, they had at least a couple hours to finish the job, and the Soviets wouldn't be able to call for help in that time either.

Also, if there was a good thing about prefab buildings, it was that they were fairly simple to repair or capture. The squadron only had to wait about fifteen more minutes before the batch of six tanks were ready after the welds cooled down… Unfortunately, slugging it out with the Tesla Coils would at best be hard to pull off without sustaining losses. Their best bet was…

* * *

_Near Polish-USSR Border, February 19, 1982_

Mark's eye twitched and his hands trembled slightly as he lowered his binoculars, turning to Tanya, who was sitting atop the turret of the T-75 Rhino tank. "Which person, _which abysmally foolish person_ decided to stash _ammunition crates_ around the base of their Tesla Coils?"

She shrugged "Hey, the Soviet Army was never known for competence with its politically appointed officers and even more annoying political commissars, you know."

"Well, there are two War Factories in this base, maybe they have a few more tank crates? Everyone, elevate guns and prepare to fire over the hill into the Soviet base at the coordinates of the four Tesla Coils, which I've plotted into the computers. Tanya, you should get off and move back a bit, this is going to be loud."

"Well, We did hijack a couple Flak Tracks for a reason, I'm going to hole up in there for now, so that we can charge in after you shell the base enough."

"It's a good thing manufacturing tanks in the field requires time for the hulls to cool from the welding jobs before they can be manned." Mark muttered, it might be a shorter time in this cold weather, but it still took more than five minutes before they'd not burn people on contact, which was more than enough time to get this job done even if the Soviets tried to assemble tanks.

The Rhinos had stopped behind a hill near the base's side gate, if you could call a gap in the concrete walls a gate. This was ludicrous from Mark's point of view as it was better to at least have a watch tower up here to see enemies coming from beyond the hill. They would have sent a spy in, except for the minor fact that the Tesla Reactors here had Conscripts standing around near them so disabling the power grid wasn't really an option. After all, unless they could, er, _borrow_ a Soviet Engineer's uniform (the man wouldn't want it back later, or rather wouldn't want anything later…), they probably wouldn't sneak past the dogs. They would have a hard time sneaking past the Conscripts into the building without an Engineer uniform as typical Conscripts weren't allowed into Tesla Reactors. So they'd thrown that idea out the window and decided on blasting their way in, apparently, the Soviets wanted to help them by _piling ammunition next to a turret_. Well, then, Mark was certainly not about to say no…

It only took four shots from the Rhinos to get both the Tesla Coils not guarding the front gate to topple in spectacular explosions from the detonating ammunition crates. It then took only a few more moments to eliminate the front gate Coils by blowing the Tesla Reactors powering the base to hell while the Flak Tracks surged into the base, firing their flak cannons at the infantry inside to extreme effect. Those left standing were mown down using the machine guns on the Flak Tracks. As for the Tesla Coils at the front gates on the north side of this particular silo's surrounding outpost, well, if there was one big disadvantage of non-mortar/missile defensive turrets, it was that they had blind spots. In this case, the Flak Tracks sheltered behind the Tesla Reactors and the northern War Factory to great effect, resulting in the Tesla Coils being unable to use their ionizing lasers on the air between the targets and the coils, and thus preventing them from firing.

The trickiest part of the operation was the question of how to wreck the silo beyond repair, the ideal method would be to set off the warheads stored within. However even setting off the fuel stores in the underground part of the silo, the method planned initially for the operation, would have allowed the other silo outpost to see them rather clearly with how high the fireball would rise. So, there was a slight impasse and some head-scratching until they agreed to set off all the nukes at both bases in synchronicity after capturing the other base. They couldn't exactly use the nukes from the eastern one to wreck the west one, as the silos were hardened against nuclear strikes from the outside.

Mark was happy to discover that his basic combat skills had not diminished as he broke into the control rooms of the second silo right after Tanya. They'd run the group of Rhinos behind some trees "near" (about a kilometre away from) the front door of the Soviet base, and started a gunnery duel between the 15 tanks they now had (a la capturing and repurposing War Factories) and the two Tesla Coils. After blasting through the tree cover the tanks were sheltering behind, the two Coils managed to wreck two of the tanks before toppling. Of the four crewmen—the vehicles were undermanned, with only driver and gunner, due to not enough hands being available on the commando squad—only one escaped their tank trying to cook off as the armour superheated and the electric discharges either fried or ignited things inside. They should have functioned as Faraday cages, but apparently improvements to Tesla Coil design meant penetrating killing was more likely than disabling a la frying of electronics and slagging of armour, which was the usual case back in WWIII.

As the silos had been locked down a la landline secure communications from the Battle Lab base, it wasn't possible for the silo crew to launch. The group of tanks blew through most of the base due to lack of Soviet anti-tank infantry in this base, while Soviet engineers were working on getting a better long-range broadcast system working, before they were mown down as the base was secured. Sending a Spy into a Tesla Reactor to wreck the power grid, the parts outside the silo, meant, well…

The remaining Tesla Coils were toppled in short order by close-range tank fire. The infantry guarding the facilities didn't stand a chance, and once the hackers got through the silo security protocols, they slaughtered everyone in the control rooms. Then they established control of the warheads and slaved them to a timer, before calling for Nighthawk stealth choppers for evac.

They loaded up into the five choppers, bringing with them the data storages looted from the Battle Lab by Tanya and formerly shoved in the Flak Tracks. The stealth transport helicopters flew off into the dark, snowy night without further incident. Roughly ten minutes later, the timers expired on the warhead controls and three of the warheads in each silo complex detonated. This thoroughly and decisively wrecked both silo complexes, and would result in Soviet leadership pulling their remaining IRBM-equipped units deeper into Russia. This at least made it easier to shoot down the missiles as there were more interception opportunities in mid-course, for ABM batteries stationed in Germany.

Due to the stealth paint of the choppers and the night colour scheme, they went undetected as they flew back behind the German border and dropped off at the forward base they'd staged the operation from. "Well, good work, everyone." Mark told the commando crew as they exited the choppers to half the base personnel applauding them.

"Agreed…Wonder what sort of shit they'll put us up to next?" Tanya replied dryly.

"I'm guessing that now the fronts have stabilized or are soon to stabilize, the war is going to enter a tedious and grinding stage." Mark sighed and rubbed his eyes.

* * *

A/N: Well, there goes probably the largest defeat SI will suffer before the Sixth World War aka War On Terror. The initial warring factions are the United American States-European-Oceanian-Indian Alliance, aka "The Vowels", and the SI-Russia-GLA Pact.

Expect Generals 2, the bullshit that it is shaping up to be at present (the single player campaign is going to be a _DLC_… EA is just killing all the good brands, huh? Well FUCK YOU EA!) to not be included fully in the four-year War On Terror aka Sixth World War. Also, the idea of a single major terrorist attack leaving no politicians, diplomats or activists is ridiculous (mostly the "no politicians" bit).

By the way, The Moscow Conference of 1957 never had Chinese attendance for obvious reasons, one was WWIII and the second was that Mao did not make the "If we have to lose half the world to defeat imperialism then so be it" speech. This is obvious because I guarantee you that given the number of spies Hannah had she would have gotten wind of it and there wouldn't have been a Beijing left for the Nuclear Terrorist Bombing during WW6 to occur in. If that's what it takes to prevent a psycho emperor wannabe from getting his filthy paws on nukes then so be it, he said it himself after all. SI-Chinese relations were frigid until the Deng Xiaoping Era, but that's not the main focus here… though it is part of why the Chinese aren't in this war yet.

REVIEW!


	3. The -Grind-y- Part

A/N: HOLY SHIT my communication skills suck… In WW6 i.e. War On Terror the initial two sides are "The Vowels" and the SI-Russia-GLA Pact, later on China joins in, initially on the Vowels' side but later on the side of the Pact. Other countries are also involved to large extents but… well, you'll see… The only Terrorist is George W. Bush, and the GLA are, more or less, good guys, you'll be able to tell by the unit names I'm assigning to them (Redoing most of the names and units for GLA!).

Nenfaer, I went with what RA2 gave us in the maps, which could only be explained by people being, to quote Mark, "abysmally foolish".

**I NEED MORE VOTERS FOR THE SHIP/REINFORCEMENT POLL ON MY PROFILE! RIGHT NOW THE TWO INITIAL WARSHIP CHOICES ARE TIED! (as of January 4, 2013)**

* * *

Chapter 3: The "Grind-y" Part

_America, late February to late March, 1982_

On February 28th, the first of the eight new Field Divisions SI had assembled from mounds of spare hardware and recently trained soldiers entered combat. Some of the old gear had been lying around in reserve storages since the end of World War Three twenty-two years earlier, but were now taken out of storage, dusted off (obviously) and updated. Electronics systems were removed and replaced with modernized hardware, armour plating was stripped off and replaced with newer, better composite plating layers, and anything beyond simple repairs was replaced. Fortunately, SI had not undergone any major equipment (or, for that matter, piping) calibre changes in the intervening years. This was unlike the Americans who frequently had trouble with metric versus Imperial measurements and several very similar calibres that could easily be catastrophically confused when replacing, say, engine parts.

The Soviets had also brought up reinforcements, and dug in doggedly around the White House region of Washington, regularly trading artillery and missile fire with the American forces defending the vicinity of the Pentagon. Skirmishes occurred in the city between the advance elements of both sides on a daily basis, and it had long since devolved into a battle of attrition. Due to the inferior training of most of the Soviet forces, it was a battle they were losing slowly.

SI's 17th through 24th Field Divisions were now bolstering the shattered remnants of the three Field Divisions committed to the assault on Chicago and the remaining elements of the American II Corps that had survived the nuclear destruction of that city. These survivors had been battling both radiation poisoning and advancing Soviet forces for weeks. They had been severely under-equipped in tanks since most of their equipment had been committed to the desperate assault on the Psychic Amplifier and been destroyed or badly contaminated by the blast. They had lost more than sixty percent of their personnel during the battle in Chicago and subsequently another thirty percent from radiation poisoning, so the total number of troops still resisting amounted to no more than 25,000 soldiers. They had been bundled together by Carville as the 1st Improvised Division and ordered to submit to the SI command chain, which then had to deal with the logistical difficulties of handling different supply systems (i.e. Imperial vs. Metric) and weapons calibres. They also had the unenviable task of teaching Americans the fact that "Heavy Machine Gun" did NOT necessarily mean a .50 cal, which took quite a few weapons jams and much explaining before they could persuade the Americans to check ammunition crates for a 7 or 5 after the 12-point and before the "millimetres".

Two Canadian Army Divisions and many US National Guard units had joined the First Improvised, and they'd managed to dig in their heels and resist the Soviet advance, though outnumbered more than five to one, on a line across Wisconsin and Minnesota, stretching roughly from Minneapolis to Green Bay. It was up to entirely National Guard units to hold the right flank of the line, which they did admirably. However, the Soviets launched a major attack in South Dakota on February 28th, 1982, this proved to be a rather huge mistake. Why? Well, Shepard had over the last week moved all eight newly formed Divisions into southern Manitoba, due north of the Soviet advances in the North American Plains, with plans of attacking southward in early March.

While those units had been training over the past months, recruitment had already accrued enough (another eight divisions' worth) to reinforce/reconstitute lost units or expected losses, these forces would be ready in about late June as six freshly commissioned units and a bunch of reinforcements. The Americans were running their own training facilities, so SI didn't need to deal with their forces, which was quite nice. They were already draining enough experienced personnel from their Clients that recruitment there was bolstering SI garrisons with local SDF personnel. The Clients were also recruiting fresh troops to keep their Self-Defence Forces at full nominal strength. So, SI couldn't afford to reconstitute American units as much as they'd like to. After all, the Shepards used voluntary service and had never yet had to use conscription, and they didn't feel it was prudent to set the precedent, at least not yet.

As a interesting side note, the fact that Romanov had been so horrified he'd ordered a ban on the use of strategic nuclear weapons by his forces was one of the things that saved him from being executed at the end of the war. In addition, evidence unearthed later proving that he was mind-controlled by Yuri at the start of the war ensured he was eventually let off. His help to the Allies and help in reorganizing the Soviet Union to assist in the Psychic Dominator Disaster was also good for clearing his reputation.

Regardless of that, the Soviet attack into North Dakota prompted the SI units parked in Manitoba, the seven divisions that had already arrived, to blaze south and basically smash the Soviets' faces in with a hammer. Sadly, in the hands of inexperienced personnel, the kill-to-loss ratio in vehicles did not surpass three to one, as they would have easily done with experienced crews. The T-1965s were responsible for killing Apocalypse Tanks, as the tank destroyers had a reasonable chance of punching through their glacis plates frontally and could withstand fire from the Apocalypse Tanks for some time. T-1955s/1962s took care of the Rhino tanks, as they could withstand fire from the Rhinos… at least for a while, and could punch through the T-75 Rhino's armour with reasonable rates of success.

A hole was quickly torn using a spearhead of heavy armour into the Soviet front line, and APCs stormed into the gap, using their superior manoeuvrability compared to the heavier tanks to stab into the Soviet rear echelons. Their 200mm anti-tank missiles blasted the tanks on either side of the advance to scrap that formed a barrier that partly occluded the advance from the lines of fire of the more distant tanks on either side of the spearhead. However, exposing turret flanks to massed fire from high-powered armour-piercing cannons of SI make was… unadvisable.

In the meantime, Flak Tracks and lighter Soviet vehicles proved too weakly armoured to resist armour-piercing shells from the APC columns that struck at the weaker elements of the Soviet push mercilessly. Mounted infantry sprayed suppressing fire from the firing ports of the APCs as they thundered by Soviet infantry. The point wasn't quite to kill the infantry, but keep their heads down long enough that they wouldn't be able to fire on the APCs effectively, to delay them long enough for the flamethrowers of the T-1955s to arrive and cook them. This was facilitated by the APCs firing their missile launchers into the rears and flanks of the Soviet tanks as they outflanked the Soviets' main armoured and anti-tank forces, rear elements of which turned to face the new threat, shielded from SI tank fire by their compatriots to their north. Unfortunately, while able to frontally resist several hits from the American TOW (in different part of the armour), the 200mm HEAT warhead of SI-built anti-tank missiles was a bit excessive for the T-75 Rhino.

Soviet Terror Drones, the only Soviet vehicles able to somewhat keep up with the tracked lunatics racing over the now churned-up field, tried to leap and electromagnetically latch onto SI vehicles to drill into the armour to install and detonate the limpet-mine style warheads they carried, but the skeletal, fragile machines proved too flimsy to stand up to even sustained Battle Rifle fire, supplied from one APC's infantry covering the next from the drones. The belt-fed 40mm cannons of the APCs didn't exactly help the chances of the Soviet auxiliaries and infiltrators while the heavier armour was occupied in slugging matches with SI's heavy armour, which had retreated to the safer but still close range of about 2.5 kilometres by driving in reverse.

This was a range safe from flank shots (in terms of inbound projectile angles, any hits on the flanks would be at relatively oblique angles and thus ineffective, like most frontal hits) by the Soviet units, but at which they were still a threat that couldn't possibly be ignored. This put the Soviets in the unenviable position of being sandwiched until the second wave could arrive. Unfortunately for them, the second wave was currently being harassed by Paratrooper Assault Vehicles landed behind the old Soviet lines. The transport choppers had flown from the Minneapolis area.

Soviet vehicles, like SI vehicles, weren't as fast driving backward as driving forward, with the end result that the paratroopers, by harassing from the south, managed to prevent the backward-driving second wave from arriving at the battlefield until things had already been decided. The APCs, which ran into their vanguard elements first after retreating southward from the main battlefield to reload their missile launcher ammo racks, took significant losses until they broke contact and fled.

The offensive APC (Combat-type APCs, not Radar, SAM or Artillery types) forces headed north to meet back up with the heavier units that had been exterminating the remaining first-wave Soviet units. The second-wave Soviets arrived too late and were met with tank destroyers already dug into hull-down positions sniping them with 150mm smoothbore cannon fire. Other vehicles had hurriedly deployed in cover (often made by simply dozer-blading yourself and buddies a short, shallow trench to hide in), firing 110mm cannons and anti-tank missiles at the inbound Soviet armour. SAM-equipped APCs far back from the line were firing their missiles to intercept long-ranged V3 missile launcher fire while Artillery APCs were thumping out a steady rhythm of shells as they had been doing for the past while. It didn't take too long to break up the Soviet attack and plough forward with the momentum that had been built up.

That battle had inflicted some significant losses on the new units, which made it very fortunate that Shepard had trained a lot of reinforcement troops along with the eight divisions. Most of the losses were replaced within two weeks—the time required to move the reinforcements around—while the units were ploughing south continuously through Soviet units. Losses on the Minneapolis-Green Bay line had been significant enough that the broken remnants of many units had been coalesced into the Second and Third Improvised Divisions. All three Improvised Divisions were now temporarily withdrawn from the line as Soviet pressure let up, for rest and restructuring. Much of First Improvised would have been honourably discharged outright due to injuries and disabilities, were the situation less serious.

The momentum of the attack soon broke, mostly as the new soldiers, though well trained and highly disciplined, were still not accustomed to days after nights of continuous mobile warfare. Seven hundred kilometres south of where they had first engaged the enemy, three days ago, the offensive ground to a halt in northern Nebraska, mostly due to combat fatigue. Reserved, relatively untouched elements were dispatched to attack Soviet logistics routes in the vicinity while the main force rested for a day. They could have gotten here much faster if they hadn't paid attention to salvaging wrecked vehicles for parts and cleaning up the battlefields, including fixing up Soviet hardware i.e. Apocalypse Tanks to fill gaps. Learning to use that hardware cost some time too, hence the relatively slow advance. There were other reasons—if there weren't, they would have done it faster—including getting the Soviets on-edge and getting them to adjust their defences, deploying more and using up their stores of packed defensive turret crates around their logistics bases further south.

This was a very desirable outcome as Soviet forces around the salient dug in cautiously and tried to cut off the SI supply routes. Well, they regretted that dearly as Logistics Brigades tended to have heavy mobile anti-everything firepower but very little ability to hold ground. In other words, they had many T-1955s with flamethrowers, a bunch of APCs, mostly for anti-aircraft (a few Radar, many SAM and some Combat), some assault choppers, a crap-load of armoured trucks, and minimal infantry. To hold ground, a ground unit would require not only AA-fitted APC groups, but also a large infantry complement and, more importantly for SI units after 1965, T-1965 "Tank Destroyers".

The Soviets didn't seem to quite understand what this meant, i.e. the only raiding force that could punch through the armoured screen reliably and get at the truck convoys was groups of Apocalypse Tanks. This was understandable, however, as the Apocalypse Tanks would have quickly been outrun or bypassed by the convoys, and any group of lesser tanks i.e. T-75s large enough to overwhelm the T-1955 guard forces would be fairly easily detected by the assault choppers used for reconnaissance or the PAVs deployed by a Paratrooper Brigade along the routes as pickets. Sabotaging the rail lines that the advancing force had commandeered was a lot less simple than it seemed, as Arrows held absolute air superiority, with no Soviet fighters available to fight them, and the rail lines were carefully guarded. This was, of course, if one did not count Kirov airship missile and flak batteries as fighters… which they were not, being more flying fortresses than anything else. This made the two main aerial combatants border on the incomparable with respect to type of aircraft.

The F-1958E had, compared to the original Arrow, adopted internal storage racks in the large cranked-delta (similar to two deltas assembled together) wings of small, close-range air-to-air missiles in addition to hard-points for heavier munitions. Canards had been installed since the D model and been retrofitted to older models too. Delta wings were in general more durable than swept wings, offering much less wing loading and therefore higher general-purpose manoeuvrability. However, total available lift, as typical of delta-wings, was slightly reduced by stability-dictated design aspects on the wing's trailing edge, which gave rapid deceleration while pulling sharp turns, something usually undesirable in dog-fighting. The F-1958E had significantly less wing fuel tank capacity than previous models, but this was regarded as acceptable since long-range missions would usually use external fuel tanks regardless of wing fuel capacity, which was still somewhat superior to similar swept-wing aircraft.

However, a Soviet offensive in late March pushed the new "Allied II Corps" back into South Dakota before they could exploit the now static nature of Soviet defences. The relative shortage of turret crates the Soviets south of them, coupled with a need to deploy them in clusters, meant it should be possible to sneak by the supply bases and hit them where things hurt, the supply LINES. Sadly this was no longer possible due to the Soviets' just-brought-in Kirov support helping push them back.

It had not been until the Soviet advance hit the southern reaches of South Dakota that they entered range of the ultra-heavy SAM batteries installed in Bismarck, North Dakota. These missiles could take down Kirovs and for that matter IRBMs with only a couple hits, unlike conventional close-range AA missiles which had warheads measuring in the few kilograms range of explosives and needed many dozens of hits to do enough damage to bring down a Kirov. After that, the dangerous carpet-bombing of the Kirov airships was neutralized. A few lost Kirovs meant that the Soviets were unwilling to take more of their Kirovs further north. That made their advance stop dead in the face of dug-in T-1965s with combined-arms support.

The eastern seaboard was seeing constant battles fought between two SI divisions in Maine and Soviet forces in New Hampshire. Quebec's border was held by reservist and militia forces, with Canadian Air Force support. The two SI divisions tying down the Soviet forces south and southeast of them had kept the heat off them for two and a half months by the time March 1982 rolled around.

The Germans had, in the last days of the winter, sent something very interesting to the Americans, namely prism technology. According to the manuals, it was an "attuned energy beam designed to penetrate armour surfaces and detonate within due to a marginally delayed containment matrix collapse after impact on a solid surface disrupts the phasing harmonic". Jane and Hannah Shepard would not be impressed when, after Jane's daughters went off to "boarding school" at age eleven, they discovered precisely what the technology was supposed to imitate. They were also very much not pleased with the then REALLY old coot called Einstein for his excessive use of long, smart-sounding words.

Throwing that aside, the Prism Tower was quite a decent anti-vehicle weapon, with high firing rate, decent range, and penetrative capacity. Sure, it might take a number of shots to blast through composite armour, but it was still a pretty powerful anti-tank weapon, particularly when multiple towers linked up to amplify their power. Range was limited by aerial particles, as was the case for Tesla Coils, so they were comparable defences, with the Prism Tower having the edge.

* * *

_Africa and Middle East, late February to early April, 1982_

Interestingly, the Soviets seemed to need to pay some more attention to precisely what their allies' opinions were, since Libya was STILL "mobilizing" against Algeria. If mobilization included not even shutting down cross-border trade and communications, and of course not doing anything to remotely act like you might be on the road to war—even stopping the increase of Libyan influence in Chad among its warring factions to signal themselves as a non-threat, although their intervention still led to the "Great Toyota War" by 1987—then they were mobilized all right. In other words, although the Algerian SDF and SI 5th Field Division were mobilized and at DEFCON 4, they were only thus because of wariness about the potential of a surprise attack. Libya seemed to have a pretty good idea of its own capabilities, as the Algerian SDF's two Armoured Divisions and four Mechanized Infantry Brigades were more than the Libyan Army could possibly handle.

In other SI Client States and friends, the situation was overall about as dire—in other words, not at all—as Algeria. Cameroon, North Korea and Palestine were all currently still not involved in active combat, and Cuba had declared neutrality in the war despite Soviet pressure. The Clients had sent many troops to the battlefields and reservists to training camps in Canada and had declared war on the Soviet Union, but not engaged in significant land or air combat yet. This was as all of them knew full well that since the Soviets wanted to try to conquer the world, they would be attacked regardless of whether or not war was declared, and it was better to take a stand and destroy the aggressors before they were targeted. All of their Self-Defence Forces were at DEFCON 4 with the exception of their navies, which were at DEFCON 3.

However, that would soon change as several Cameroon border patrols came under fire from forces from Chad. Apparently, many of the warring factions of Chad had been subverted to the Soviet side by sufficient bribes, in hopes of anchoring SI's 6th Field Division in Cameroon and preventing its investment in the North American Theatre. However, the Soviets seemed to have miscalculated as to how quickly Chad's warlords would act and thus the harassment came too late to make a difference—6th Division had already long since been moved back to Canada to contain the Soviet advances in upstate New York toward Lake Ontario and Niagara Falls.

The Cameroon SDF fielded, in addition to its nine Light Infantry Brigades, three Armoured Divisions which could be moved about quickly through the highway network built around the country since it became an SI Client. These were considered more than adequate to force any attacker from the surrounding states to back off, and then penetrate their territory to capture their capital and force a surrender. Sure, they were "only" equipped with the T-1962, which couldn't stand up to Apocalypse Tanks very well (i.e. on a ratio of less than two or three T-1962s to one Apocalypse Tank), but it was still quite a good match against the T-75 Rhino. The sad thing for the Chad militants was that they were mostly using not-heavily-modified Technicals—pickup trucks with machine-guns (if they were modified, they could in theory mount anti-tank missiles, making them an actual threat)—and infantry as basically motorized infantry. Yes, this could be an irritant to Light Infantry Brigades out on patrol or in outposts in the savannah where Chad bordered Cameroon, but when it met an armoured force as large as the Cameroon SDF could bring to bear, numbering about 400 tanks per division plus many APCs, well…

The result of the first, largest, and only encounter between one Armoured Division of the Cameroon SDF and the Chadians, in late February 1982, was a field littered with scrap metal and a lot of captives. Said scrap metal had, until a brief time ago, been a number of functional Technicals and a few assorted armoured vehicles. Said captives were soon released as the Cameroon government realized manpower was far less of an issue for the Chadian warlords than the lost vehicles. After that, the Chadians almost immediately gave up on any additional harassment attempts and the border calmed down. Cameroon didn't even need to fully mobilize to quell the harassments from its other neighbours after that display of power.

Interestingly, in 1987's Great Toyota War, the French provided Air Force cover for the Chadians against the Libyans. However, what really mattered was the 400 Toyota pick-up trucks equipped with MILAN _anti-tank missiles_. Now, that was when the Chadians decided to unite to throw the Libyans out of their country, but it proved to the world that tanks could be defeated by Technicals. The Cameroon SDF were just fortunate they hadn't run into any anti-tank weapons, at least, none able to pierce the T-1962 or lock on to targets, for they didn't take any APC losses either due to rockets missing their targets.

The Egyptians had also received bribes and directions from the Soviets to attack and conquer Palestine, but… they had been one of the oldest civilizations for good reason, they had more brains than to retry something that had spectacularly failed last time. There was also the minor fact that the authoritarian Egyptian government had been kept in place mostly by way of American influence for the last few decades. They expected the Americans would be better to align with after the war since chances were the Soviets would replace them with a new puppet government.

They also expected the Americans to emerge victorious, given how the Soviets had been ground to a halt, being forced to open new fronts in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. The former was a front fighting against most of Europe, the latter was against Turkish Army forces and the SI 3rd and 4th Field Divisions. Iraq and Iran were busy fighting each other, so Egypt could expect no support from Iraq even if it hadn't been a war initially orchestrated by America, before Dugan took office, to destabilize the region and justify an intervention operation. This would nominally have allowed them to set up a puppet state in Iran like Saddam Hussein was their puppet in Iraq. Unfortunately for American ambitions that was at the very least well out of the question until the current war could end.

Iraq, despite how much SI despised its American-supported dictator, was receiving aid from SI in the form of captured Soviet hardware and infantry weapons manufactured in Palestine, beginning in early 1982 as the Iranian Army advanced westward. As for how this was explained to the public—SI liked to invoke good faith in civilians—it was phrased as "Iranian fundamentalism is more dangerous than Iraqi aggression at the present time. We don't need a bunch of fanatics trying to fight a holy war with Palestine while we are busy battling the Soviet Union!" Iraq was also receiving massive amounts of aid from other powers, including one that SI privately strongly disliked, Saudi Arabia, which refused to negotiate with the Shepards on a leader-to-leader basis because they were female.

However, the Shepards had to tolerate the ridiculous country and its oil syndicate called OPEC for a bit longer since the war was currently occupying most of their resources. SI couldn't, in the face of the war, fund the sort of large-scale oil recon and extraction operations they had in the years before the war, so their oil production wasn't yet adequate to challenge the tyrannical rule of OPEC over a significant part of the civilized world. Notably, in the Shepards' books, any country that didn't allow women to vote, drive, or go freely into public did not count as a civilized nation, so Saudi Arabia most certainly was not a country they liked. This probably didn't help Saudi Arabia be inclined to negotiate things face-to-face with SI's leaders, but if they decided to be oversensitive and reactionary, well, it was their own problem. As many reckoned later, the Sixth World War had a really damned long fuse, beginning with clashes over women's rights and reaching its flashpoint with George W. Bush's terrorism.

* * *

_Far East Theatre, late February to early April, 1982_

In North Korea, recruitment rates had been very elevated since the war began. If there was one aspect that was extremely nice with any Asian country, it was their national pride and Confucius-bullshitted cultural patriotism. Hannah and Jane had read the works of Confucius, and labelled it as "a text that all oppressors and oppressor-wannabes must read". According to them, Confucian cultures, like the twisted version of Communism found in the USSR-affiliated states, focused so much on keeping the peasants downtrodden that they were stagnant by nature and would crumble to any real external pressure by a progressive nation.

This, they had concluded in their personal writings, was the reason that the Asian Dynasties, with the exception of post-Meiji Japan, succumbed so easily to the Western Colonial Powers. Given that the Koreans themselves had either already realized or had been quickly enlightened as to their need to change to survive as a culture and a race, it hadn't been too hard to get them to abandon the application of Confucian policies and bring in a democratic system of government. According to the sisters' writings, and those of Lenin for that matter, democracy was in fact a core component of socialism, with all working toward the good of the society as defined by what the majority believed to be best course of action.

With the culture change after the SI takeover came great technological changes in the form of rather thorough modernization, industrialization and urbanization of the Socialist Republic of Korea. That industrial machinery was now turned over in significant extent to war production, with most of the automobile industry put to use building tanks, APCs and trucks. First blood for the SROK with the Soviets had come almost as soon as the war began, in December of 1982. Interestingly, this was considered an accident, since the Typhoons in question had taken the North Korean ships passing through the strait between Hokkaido and Honshu as a South Korean supply convoy bound for America. Since then the NKSDF (the alternate name, one which most English-speakers thought sounded less stupid when read out) had been fighting a constant battle with Soviet Typhoons and Scorpion attack boats for the sea lanes through the Sea of Japan. They were also doing their part to protect the North Pacific in general, by trying to intercept Typhoon squadrons as soon as they left Vladivostok, but success rates weren't high.

Anti-torpedo technology was quickly becoming widespread among heavier civilian shipping, mostly as ships without the systems installed had a nasty tendency to be relocated to the bottom of the sea. Most of the maritime production of the SROK was dedicated to churning out Corvettes and freighters (of the 1975 class, not the old 1935 or 1960 types) by February 1982. However, there seemed to be no significant air or land combat going on, which was extremely odd as they'd been expecting a Kirov-based aerial attack on North Korea as soon as SI's alignment in this war became clear, and probably a coordinated amphibious assault too. Upon closer inspection, it seemed that the USSR didn't want to bring currently-neutral China into the war, so was not acting aggressively in the Far East Theatre other than by assaulting maritime shipping. China historically hadn't had much invested in maritime shipping, so even with Deng Xiaoping's new policies, attacking shipping—as long as it didn't have a Chinese flag on it—was very unlikely to bring China into the war.

India was also staying out, even though the Allies wanted them to join on the Allied side and the Soviets weren't even trying to subvert either populous nation, since they seemed to know any attempt at doing so would turn them and their manpower over to the Allies. Yes, the Soviets had superior quantity and quality of tanks compared to the Americans, British and French right now, but if they lost the overall quantity part of the deal… well, they'd already lost in average quality and local quantity to SI, they couldn't afford to lose their other edge.

That brought the analysis to the next major problem…

* * *

_SI Toronto HQ, April 20th, 1982_

"WHY the HELL did the Soviets start a war that they don't seem to have been fully prepared to finish?" Hannah was pacing like a caged tiger in her sister's office, having marched in a few moments ago when things started not computing after she read all the reports she had available.

"Hannah, watch your…" Jane shut her mouth abruptly as she glanced over at the play-pen in her office. Her husband was grinning back at her with his hands over Harmony's little ears—she could tell it was Harmony because the twins dressed differently, Harmony preferred dull colours and Hermione bright ones. Hermione was staring at a small brown beetle scuttling across the wooden floor next to the play-pen with intense focus while her older twin was staring at her mother and aunt talking about something that seemed to her to be important.

There was a sudden rustling of clothes as Hermione jumped up, grabbed a rather large Picture Dictionary from the book-shelf next to the pen, and promptly fell on her butt from the weight of the book. She flipped through to look for the beetle in question, then showed it excitedly to her father ("Daddy, look!"), trying her best to sound out the scientific name of the beetle, but having no trouble with the rest of the words.

"Mione needs to look _around_ more, not stare so focused-ly at things." Harmony pronounced to her father as she rolled her eyes at her twin. Hermione shot her a dirty look and crossed her little arms over her chest, then turned her head away, lifting her chin and pouting proudly with a little "hmpf" thrown in.

Hannah leaned closer to Jane with one side of her mouth turned up in a smirk "I agree, Hermione needs to be more observant of what people around her are doing, although identifying insects _can_ be very important to survival."

"Mione, how 'bout we pin the bug and start collection?" Harmony proposed.

"No, Harm, that'll kill it!" Hermione looked at the floor again as if to find and protect the insect, but the beetle had disappeared.

"I don't like bugs, Mione, if I see it again, and if you don't want it, it's going to die."

"I think you should probably have this discussion elsewhere." Dan Granger suggested to his wife and sister-in-law as the twins seated themselves on opposite sides of the play-pen area, Hermione reading a book on the mattress, shooting dirty looks at her sister and Harmony sitting on the carpet that covered the pen's floor, also reading but completely unfazed. The sisters and their father were near-permanent residents in Jane's rooms at HQ now, with the war going full stride, as Jane and Dan agreed that it could be dangerous for the twins to live outside the high-security HQ compound at present. Dan was officially Jane's highest-ranked secretary, unofficially, he was a babysitter.

Jane nodded once "Alright, see you later, girls, see you later Dan."

"Bye Mum." Hermione said as she turned the page. Harmony just looked up and waved her hand once before going back to her own text. Dan Granger nodded in return before going back to the documents he was going through for his wife when he wasn't busy playing with the girls, bringing them food, cleaning up after them, or taking them to potty.

After they were in Hannah's office, a few hallways away from Jane's, Hannah reiterated the point she'd gotten from her reports "I don't think Romanov prepared enough, and this isn't like him. He's a generally relaxed sort of guy, likes good food and likes peace, but… I get the impression something here is very, very wrong. It wasn't like him to start the war in the first place, and it seems he was under-prepared from the start." Hannah shoved the relevant reports under her sister's nose, Jane nodded to herself a couple times as she scrutinized the sheets of paper slowly.

"Is it possible he was preparing for something else? For example, under the impression that the USSR was about to be invaded, and he needed to secretly prepare to fight some perceived enemy or other?" Jane inquired.

"No, if it was so the Red Army would and could have been much larger and less stupid. It's almost as if someone wants him to lose this one… as if someone is pushing him like Kane pushed Stalin, but it doesn't make any sense, what benefit could anyone get from a world where the Allies reigned supreme and the USSR was a shadow of its former self after being beaten down again? Kane might have been doing it to save the world from Stalin's madness, but Alex was never the warmongering sort anyhow…"

"Do you think the Allies—?" Jane left the rest unsaid.

"Dugan and Carville wouldn't, but the CIA… the Europeans… I'm not sure."

Jane shrugged "Maybe someone's got Romanov under psychic influence?"

Hannah's brows creased together in a frown "It's possible… so our priority is to defeat the Soviet Union with as minimal damage to it as possible. We can't communicate this to the Allies though, at least not directly, and without a good reason for it…"

"…They're unlikely to be inclined to comply."

"Yes."

Jane smirked "Then we will just have to force the Soviets into a surrender before too much more damage can be done to the world's infrastructure and military strength."

"That would be ideal, yes."

"Well then sister, shall we get started once our next six divisions are brought into play?" Jane's smirk stayed in place, telling Hannah all she needed to know, i.e. Jane didn't mean it.

* * *

_Washington DC, April 30th, 1982_

The Pentagon Garrison had been slowly worn down over the winter, but the Prism Tower schematics sent over by the Germans had allowed them to hold the line until now, when the crap hit the fan. The Soviets were not expecting their main White House base to get rammed from the north by six divisions' worth of SI tanks coming out of just about nowhere. Well, they should have paid more attention to the south shore of Lake Erie and what the freight shipping on the Great Lakes had been doing for the last few days. Moving the personnel was a lot stealthier than moving the tanks, so the Soviets hadn't noticed much, and once they took the vehicles that had been garrisoning most of southern Ontario from the hands of the Canadian Army forces in the region, and shipped them over the lake with the new crews, well…

In the meantime, the Prairie lines were so under-manned that the National Guard forces and local resistance fighters joining the Allied battle line were hastily instructed in the usage of the tanks and APCs left behind for now. They were all too happy to comply, although this may have had something to do with the armour and firepower it involved, plus how the vehicles' driving schemes were very intuitive and the fire control was easy to manage. After all, the first lesson taught to ALL recruits, SI or US, was that armour and firepower did no good if it couldn't be directed properly.

The European forces had finally arrived via Nova Scotia in late April and had joined this attack force, coming in from the north while SI's armies thundered in from the west. Sure, the T-1962s they were mostly making do with (not enough T-1955s had been produced during peacetime and left in storage, apparently…) were less adept at enduring fire or clearing infantry than the T-1955s, due to lack of flamethrowers, but they were still acceptable… more or less, and there were enough 1965s to deal with the Apocalypse Tanks anyhow. Adding to that, the American forces in Washington DC were being reinforced to offence-capable strength by amphibious transfer from the New England Front up the Potomac, escorted by a combined Allied fleet of freshwater i.e. shallow-draught/small and salt-water ships. The heaviest-payload weapons among them were the 200mm main guns of the SI Frigates, followed by the massed-fire150mm rocket artillery mounts on said Frigates and thereafter by the 155mm howitzers of the US "Quick-Deployment Destroyers" i.e. gunboats.

Yes, naval artillery was considered very old-fashioned with all the benefits of missiles today, so some people criticized the retention of the three-gun gun turrets on the N-E_-1975As, all three types of ships large enough to bear three-gun turrets. However, there were some times (like now, or any place where cheap-deployment warships could be useful, really) when it was simply a much cheaper (and easier to re-supply at sea) solution for close-range shore bombardment than missiles. It also took much less storage space to stow the ammunition than it would for missiles of comparable power, even with vertical box launchers. However, SI-built Frigates did support enough raw power to outgun and out-endure the comparable-role _Virginia_-class Missile Cruiser of the US Navy by a significant margin.

The fact that it also outweighed its counterpart and thus was of comparable manoeuvrability was one of the, uh, less fortunate consequences of sparing no expense in maximizing combat capability for Frigates and Destroyers. To be fair, they were far less numerous than the common Corvettes sold in bulk to just about every military trying to run a small navy with ocean-going capability. Frigates didn't have some of the devices fitted to Destroyers, but they were still quite large and costly. Measuring in at one hundred and fifty metres, they were shorter than the _Virginia_s and their other contemporaries, the _California_-class, but they were slightly wider for a length-to-beam ratio of slightly under 7:1, offering greater stability in heavy seas compared to the two American counterparts' ratios of over 9:1.

SI 1975-generation Corvettes, Frigates and Destroyers were all roughly similar size to their 1930s ancestors, but had a tendency to be significantly heavier. Their armaments had also been heavily upgraded, since several whole generations of ammunition had elapsed since the last warship generation. Employing low profile superstructures, plating angling and other measures made the ships stealthier than typical counterparts, on the other hand, their draught was deeper than the last SI warship generation, mostly as modern torpedoes no longer used contact fuses and shallow draught was less beneficial now. However, this also allowed more hydrodynamic hull designs instead of maximizing hull displacements like in previous SI warship generations.

Regardless of all that, the combined fleet sailing up the Potomac brought with it a large amount of artillery fire to rain down on the heads of the Soviets. They also brought a number of landing ships and their attached LCACs to transfer personnel and vehicles directly onto the river's banks, unlike the landing ships which had to lay down unloading ramps onto bridges and the like due to their draught being too deep to unload directly onto most of the river's shores.

What followed was a thorough and brutal mauling of the Soviet forces in the city, including forcibly removing Stalin's head from the Lincoln Memorial and reinstalling Lincoln's head. Supposedly someone commented "now America's got its head screwed on right again…" at reading the report of this, someone who was blonde and basically superhuman. A bit over two Armies' worth of Soviet troops were obliterated and another Army' worth surrendered in sparse units scattered over the battlefield. All in all, the Soviets lost half a million men from its war machine, the Americans lost about seventy thousand soldiers due to local absolute (numerical, training, equipment, knowledge of the area) superiority while fighting in the streets while Soviet armour was tied up north of the city by SI armoured formations.

Shepard's forces lost forty thousand troops due to having to engage Apocalypse Tanks with T-1962s, which could only withstand a single 125mm shell to the glacis without needing local repairs—Apocalypse Tanks fired in volleys of two shells, and the shells were engineered to not interfere with each other despite flying down very similar trajectories, so after the first shell compromised the local glacis integrity of a 1962, the second shell typically could penetrate unless the tanks were manoeuvring very aggressively. The T-1965s could only fire so fast after all, a few Apocalypses were bound to survive long enough to take out some of the lighter tanks…

T-75 Rhinos were also able to penetrate the T-1962 frontally after the glacis was weakened enough at least at the point of impact, so they used massed 115mm fire to erode the SI formations as much as possible before they were destroyed by the 110mm return fire. Still, it had been a painful battle for SI with over a third of the 3100 tanks committed to battle destroyed before the American anvil came up to meet their hammer and the Soviets were completely mulched in between.

* * *

Archivists' Note: Expect tech specs and analyses for 1975-generation SI warships in the next chapter (or to BE a large part of the next chapter). Their construction was omitted from the previous archive book because we felt it more prudent to introduce a ship type to readers in the distant future—who will probably not have seen these ships in person (museums excluded)—when they are committed to combat and technical information becomes relevant. Otherwise, technical information is likely to be forgotten by the reader before it becomes relevant. Believe us, when we were writing this archive, we'd read the tech specs before we started this Part of the Archives. Unfortunately for us, we have to now to consult them again and hash our way through the technical jargon again… because we forgot and because someone accidentally dropped the notes we'd made the first time in the shredder.

* * *

A/N: **As I already said at the start of the chapter, go vote on the poll on my profile. Also, REVIEW!**


	4. Fleet Matters

A/N: **All of the information on the American and Soviet ships were from Wikipedia. This chapter represented a painfully huge amount of research… ugh.**

Nenfaer: The "ultra-heavy SAMs" are basically SI's counterpart to the Bomarc B, their stats will be reviewed shortly. Also, SI took some pretty nasty losses back in WWII and WWIII as well, but yes, these are Hannah and Jane's first major losses in the last two decades (since WWIII ended).

* * *

Chapter 4: Fleet Matters

TECHNICAL INFORMATION: (A/N: May be TL;DR for some readers, please skip this section if you are not interested in a technical comparison.)

NOTE: _weapon type_-WC#-_calibre_-_barrel length_ gives the # of barrels in the cannon in question. This was introduced after SI began creating rotary cannons.

California-class and Virginia-class Cruisers, shared characteristics: Two D2G reactors, total 300 MW (Megawatts) energy production, but propulsion only uses 60,000 shaft horsepower or 45,000 kW (kilowatts). Displacing roughly 11000/12000 tons per ship at full load. Length 179m, Beam 19m, Draft slightly under 10m. Max speed 30+ knots. 40/39 officers, 544/540 enlisted (California/Virginia respectively for all stats with slashes).

Armament of California-class: 2x 5-inch rapid-fire gun (single turrets), 2x 20mm Phalanx CIWS (TMD), 4x 12.7mm machine guns, 6x Mark 46 12.75" Light Torpedo Launchers (anti-torpedoes and short-range anti-sub), 1 ASROC (anti-sub rocket) launcher (long-range anti-sub), 2x Single-arm missile launchers for RIM-66D Standard surface-to-air missiles, total 82 missiles stored. 2x Mk 141 (quad) Harpoon missile launchers (total 8 missiles), 1 helicopter deck, no hangar.

Armament of Virginia-class: 2x 5-inch rapid-fire gun (single turrets), 2x 20mm Phalanx CIWS (TMD), 4x Mark 46 Light Torpedo Launchers (anti-torpedoes and short-range anti-sub), 2x twin-arm launchers for RIM-66 Standard or ASROC, total 68 missiles stored. 2x Mk 141 Harpoon missile launchers, 8x Tomahawk Missile (2 armoured box launchers partly obstructing chopper deck, installed after 1983 and first used in the Psychic Dominator Disaster).

Each of the two American ships are fitted with 6 different radars: 3-D air search, 2-D air search, surface-search, missile fire control, search and fire control, and gun fire control. They also used bow-mounted sonar. Their electronic warfare systems included the AN/SLQ-32 radar receiver/tracker, Mk 36 SRBOC Chaff/Flare mortar system, and the AN/SLQ-25 Nixie torpedo deception system.

SI's N-EF-1937 series featured the following general characteristics **after their last update in 1960**: 7000 tons displacement, armoured to withstand modern American 5-inch naval guns and resist 155mm howitzer shells. 3 Diesel engines providing total max 90,000 shaft horsepower from 4 shafts. Max speed is around 40-44 knots without additional cargo loading.

6x A-WAG-200-50 (200mm calibre, 50 calibres barrel) cannons, fires sustained 3 rounds per minute per gun with autoloaders, carries 9 rounds in turret (3 more if guns are already loaded) and 105 per turret in magazine. 4x 600mm torpedo tubes in the bow (12 torpedoes). 15 S-WM-15 series mounts (note that the 15 decimetres is the INTERNAL diameter of the turret ring, not the outside). 4x A-WTC-40-75 guns in two-gun turrets (2 mounts taken up). 4x A-WG6-20-75 (9000 rounds per minute per turret) guns in two-gun turrets (2 mounts used). 4x A-WAR-150-30B/D/F (odd-numbered letters are for the different generations of mount types for land-borne artillery, even numbers for ship-borne) rocket artillery, each mount using 28 hexagonally-arranged rocket tubes (A/N: ≪+≫ from front, 7+7 per side), storing 140 rockets per launcher (112 in magazine, 28 in launcher on standby) occupying 4 mounts, can be used as chaff/flare launcher or long-range ASW weapon with contact-sticking HEAT warheads (usually 1 launcher per side carries at all times 8 ASW rounds, the other on that side has 4 Chaff rounds and 4 Flares, even when the rest of the tubes are being employed for land bombardment, when configured for naval action the specialized round count is even higher).

1x Heavy SAM silo, carries max 8 missiles (full magazine and loaded mount) range up to 450 km AA or 700 km anti-surface. 4x General-Purpose Missile Mount, with 5 arms each, retracting to reload (or for stealth), min firing interval 3 seconds, occupying 2 mounts, max 40 _assorted_ missiles (SAM, anti-ship, or anti-sub) carried in _each_ of 4 magazines, totalling 180 missiles (20 more carried loaded, even in retracted launchers). This leaves 2 mounts for whatever the commander deems appropriate for the mission. 1 Assault Chopper carried, mostly for anti-sub or rescue duty. 10x box launchers crudely bolted to deck for 200mm anti-torpedoes, 4 near bow, 6 near stern, 4 torpedoes per box, ejected by pressurized air to hit the water, guided by searching for enemy torpedo active sonar pings, each box holding 4 torpedoes, total 40. Depth charge divets near stern have been replaced by anti-torpedo tubes (32 stored per magazine, autoloader fires every 5 seconds max rate, more enduring solution than deck boxes) except for 2 which have been retained for dropping noisemakers (anti-torpedo decoys) and sonobuoys (60 stored in each magazine).

3 radar systems, Air-Search (folds up somewhat for 2d air search and smaller ship radar profile), Surface-Scan, and General-Search. One Radar receiver system, primary radar systems able to be set to passive scan if needed to vastly enhance reception. Hull sonar receptors along length of keel (total 4 receivers), is able to use trailing hydrophone arrays like most other ships and subs but does not often do so. Visual-ranging systems include 5 laser-guided cameras whose data are used as traditional optical rangefinders, one on each top forward corner of the outside of the bridge, top corners of the stern, and one at the prow. Their information when locked onto the laser beam point is compiled to give range and relative motion data for targets, although this is a last-ditch back-up system. All sensor systems feed into the same Integrated Threat Monitoring grid, which also directed missiles to interceptions and could actively direct up to 30 missiles at once reliably (note that most of the missiles are passive-directed to a given region of air/sea/land and seek their final targets on their own).

**SI N-EF-1975 series featured these characteristics:** 12000 tons Displacement. 150m long, 22m wide. One S-ESN-2400 (Support, Engine-Ship-Nuclear, 240,000 horsepower or 180,000 kW) Delivers maximum 120,000 Net Shaft horsepower (90 MW) through 4 propeller shafts for max 41-42 knots (practical max around 36 knots). 2 back-up diesel engines, delivering total maximum (not shaft) 80,000 horsepower, for emergency use only if reactor offline, cuts speed to max 20 knots as significant power is routed away for fire control and turret actuation.

4x A-WAG-200-60 (200mm calibre, 60 calibres barrel) howitzers (more often referred to as cannons), fires sustained 5 rounds per minute per gun with autoloaders, installed in two S-WM-30 mounts. Carries 14 rounds in each turret (2 more if guns are already loaded) and 150 per turret in magazine (passed up into turret in packs of 4 by the airlock-type armoured elevator). 2x 600mm torpedo tubes in the bow torpedo room, ports slightly above waterline, usually covered by retractable plates on hull, angled hydraulic launch, 30 sec reload, 12 torpedoes stored in bow torpedo room. Four such large tubes are in the stern torpedo room but pointed to the sides with angled hydraulic launch like a powered version of depth charge divets. These tubes can also be used to drop sonobuoys and noisemakers (2 of the tubes are generally dedicated to noisemakers and are always kept on standby for the purpose). The stern torpedo room has 30 noisemakers, 8 heavy torpedoes and 20 sonobuoys. 1 Assault Chopper carried, for ASW (uses the same 200mm light torpedoes as the anti-torpedo systems) and rescue. 4 Amidships Torpedo Rooms (located in pairs, around 1/4 of the way from bow or stern on the hull) each carry 4 200mm torpedo tubes, with autoloaders (each tube can fire every 5 seconds), for anti-torpedo duty, firing from torpedo ports along hull.

17 S-WM-20 Mounts, MINIMUM: 1 Heavy SAM silo (yes, still silo-style, the things are rather huge, total 9 missiles stored), 4 General-Purpose Missile Mounts (5-armed, storing 50 missiles per magazine, total max 220), 2 TMD (double 20mm rotary guns in each), 2 Light Missile Mounts (10-armed, replaces old 40mm turrets for anti-fast-attack and close-in AA duty, stores 90 missiles per mount magazine), 4 150mm Rocket Artillery Mounts (60 tubes, 300 more rockets stored per launcher magazine), 4 mounts dependent on mission parameters.

3 main radars (the surface/low-altitude-search radar is now a dedicated Pulse-Doppler device, featuring a box-shaped antenna with 4 emitters/receivers, 1 per face, to overcome the slow radial scan rates of PD radars by reducing the amount each one has to scan in a given time interval), 1 radar receiver, active sonar in bow bulge and stern (Bistatic-capable sonar system), two lines of acoustic sensors (one set per 40 metres) along bottom of hull (imitating lateral lines in fish). Towed hydrophone array is possible, but is not usually used. Optical ranging systems still the same as before.

* * *

Archivists' Note: Yes, the Shepards felt an anti-sub mortar-type system was too short-ranged (within 1500 metres as opposed to up to 20 kilometres), hence they developed a more guided (in terms of vectoring toward a given target area, guided by radio link with the parent ship, while in-flight, but also more expensive) round type for their common and popular 150mm rocket artillery to use that was effective against submarines (and, notably, tanks, when fitted with an alternate nose/guidance cap designed to seek out large thermal and metallic signatures on land). An improved version of the warhead attachment concept, applied to an anti-sub mortar, could be found shortly after the Psychic Dominator Disaster on the SAAB ASW-600 or ASW-601 systems. These improvements were quickly, er, adopted by SI for its rocket-artillery-based multi-purpose systems, though not without some issues ("Yours is branded as a grenade launcher, besides, if you're suing us for stealing your idea then we should sue you for copying our original concept of a sticking HEAT ASW warhead in the first place"). SI has always been a fan of using a small number of versatile, cheaply/easily-maintained, quickly-reloading systems instead of the multitude of dedicated, expensive, large-volley-based systems the US seems to prefer (i.e. vertical missile launch systems).

Please also note that the reduction in the number of sensor systems allowed simplified integration of weapons and sensors, allowing more weapons to be installed with the freed-up space and electrical power. The use of surface launchers instead of vertical launch systems, although not conductive to huge volleys of missiles, allows for a very packed storage pattern of missiles in magazines and makes space in the hull for said magazines and autoloaders. It also makes re-supplying the ships at sea more manageable.

* * *

_May, 1982_

While the American public, those not under Soviet oppression, were celebrating the recapture of DC and the massive set-backs of Soviet forces across the Continental US, the North Pacific was a lot less happy. Reports arrived from picket submarines, what few recon satellites were still functioning after the Russian Anti-satellites were done with them, and the NKSDF that there was a large Soviet fleet massing at Vladivostok preparing for a major offensive. NKSDF Land and Air Forces were brought up to DEFCON 3 and police-organized militia forces consisting of all remaining able-bodied persons were ordered to readiness across the eastern coast of North Korea. South Korea was similarly mobilized, although they were insane enough to still send some forces to the border of the DMZ for fear of North Korean attack, something completely preposterous for an SI Client unless they really asked for it first.

In the meantime, the American Pacific Fleet prepared to do battle around Hawaii, given intel that said the Soviets were going to try to bring them into a decisive confrontation there. Sadly, the _USS Dwight D. Eisenhower_ (Nimitz-class), _USS Enterprise_ (Enterprise-class), _USS America_ (Kitty Hawk-class), _USS John F. Kennedy_ (Kitty Hawk-class), _USS Forrestal_ (Forrestal-class), _USS Saratoga_ (Forrestal-class) and _USS Independence_ (ditto) were all in or mostly in Pacific or Mediterranean deployments.

The _USS Nimitz_ and _USS Carl Vinson_, two of the three largest-displacement aircraft carriers in the world, were sent out with their Carrier Battle Groups from their current West Coast home harbour in Washington state. Rendezvousing with them near Pearl Harbour would be the lesser carriers _USS Kitty Hawk_ and _USS Constellation_. It might be possible to rush the _America_ across the Indian Ocean from its current deployment near the Persian Gulf quickly enough but the rest of the Mediterranean carriers would be staying where they were, to enforce the blockade of the Black Sea passage, to support Allied ground operations in-theatre, and to sink as many Soviet subs and ships as possible on the GIUK Gap. The US Atlantic Fleet carriers operating out of Halifax these days were completely occupied with the war on America's East Coast.

SI's contribution to this effort included slamming their three positively _ancient_ 1937-model carriers, all of which had been on the west coast, into the fleet, leaving the _USS Ranger_ for the Soviets on the West Coast. This was the role the larger American carriers had been indulging in previously, and the Forrestal-class ship was left on the coastal duty just to keep the pressure up on the Soviets. Yes, the N-CM-1937 designs had been made with a lot of upgrade space in mind, but they'd reached their limits with the last fleet update in 1970 and were due for salvaging after the Heavy Carriers enter service in 1983. The northern Great Power also contributed a sizeable flotilla of N-EC-1975 Corvettes and N-EF-1975 Frigates.

The N-EC-1975 Corvette was designed to, like its larger counterpart, be able to deal with any type of threat with at least some effectiveness. At 110 meters long, 20 metres wide, with a draught of four and a half metres, displacing about 4500 tons (depending on the variable parts of the armament), it is conventionally-powered with two diesel-fired turbines producing 60,000 shaft horsepower down two shafts (max speed around 40 knots) and powering all onboard electronics with siphoned power. Featuring the same suite of sensors as the Frigate on a smaller (and thus slightly shorter-ranged) scale, excluding the air search radar which is jut as large, the Corvette is nonetheless a powerful combatant with its 11 S-WM-20 mounts and 150mm main gun in an auto-loading turret (in the foremost S-WM-20 mount) storing 20 shells in the turret (140 in magazine) and firing at up to 8-10 shells per minute.

The 10 other mounts usually accommodate a Heavy SAM silo (these were found to be highly effective against Kirovs and for ballistic missile defence, typically the foremost centerline mount after the gun turret, total 4 missiles stocked), two General-Purpose Missile Launchers (5-armed, storing up to 20 missiles each), a Light Missile Launcher (10-armed, typically in the rearmost centerline mount, storing max 40 short-ranged missiles), two TMD Turrets, two 150mm rocket artillery mounts (60 tubes, 120 more rocket stored per launcher) and two "whatever the commander deems appropriate". The vessel is also fitted with two 600mm torpedo tubes in the stern torpedo room (i.e. firing out to the sides) with 6 torpedoes stored, plus a total of 8 200mm torpedo tubes, 4 of which are in the stern torpedo room and 4 more of which are amidships (40 anti-torpedoes stocked). The stern torpedo room also includes a dedicated device for launching sonobuoys and noisemakers, a device which is essentially a shortened, manually-loaded version of a 600mm torpedo tube.

As a side note, N-ED-series Destroyers had not had a 1975 generation because it was felt that it was better to let the Corvettes and Frigates withstand trial by fire, then to learn lessons from them and incorporate design improvements before pushing out a capital ship to sail in company with the nuclear-powered Heavy Carriers currently under construction. Currently, no ships designated as Destroyers still serve with the SI Navy, though the old ships were, after 1975, scavenged for metal or lent out to the various Client States as museum ships, like the ex-_Yamato_ and ex-_Musashi_ were being Museum ships, with the _Dawn_ (ex-_Musashi_) parked in Vancouver harbour and the _Mist_ in Halifax. Both were maintained in some semblance of ready condition, although they'd need much updating if they were ever going to be brought out for battle again. The guns needed replacing too, which brought much debate as to precisely what would be done in that respect.

So far, the general consensus was that it would probably be more economical to build new ships if a symmetric war called for cheap-bombardment (i.e. gun based, as missiles were expensive…) and to research new gunnery technologies for said ships, like coil-guns, rail-guns, or, ideally, plasma-based weapons. But that was for the future, at least, the future in 1975. SI had planned on cutting back its military expenditures in favour of quick turnovers to designs. They had gotten uncomfortable with the idea of taking almost _**40**_ years to build a new generation of warships because the old ones just weren't cutting it anymore.

Even with the war starting, it was expected that the Frigate and Corvette classes would be sufficient in terms of, well, everything that could matter at the moment. The fact that the Heavy SAMs could be programmed to move on a mostly ballistic course and thus could hit targets up to 700 kilometres away with terminal guidance didn't help fuel any sort of need for development of a larger ship able to carry many long-range cruise missiles like the Americans were doing. That and the fact that carriers, chopper or ground-based aircraft were able to provide long-range strike power made sure things worked out alright even with the budget restrictions.

Worthy of note was the fact that the ground-based Heavy SAM silos had been equipped with the same missiles, which were much smaller and vastly cheaper than the obsolete American counterpart, the BOMARC B. The Americans had decided the BOMARC and SAGE systems were too expensive and had scrapped them in the 1970s, and there were unlikely to be large swarms of Soviet Strategic Bombers in the face of improving ballistic missile technologies. SI had taken an interest in a long-range ultra-heavy surface-to-air missile for terminal-phase ballistic missile defence and targeting of single, high value aerial targets, as well as flexibility in use as a short-range mostly-ballistic missile by itself. The 450km effective AA range offered by the solid-fuel rocket engine and fold-out wings (unlike the BOMARC's fixed wings, this saved a lot of space with respect to launcher options) allowed a handful of outposts fitted with the weapons to cover whole countries.

They were not exactly expensive to maintain either, as the two-stage solid-fuelled rockets only needed checking of the explosive bolts connecting the stages, checking for nozzle obstructions, periodic software patches and examination of the nose guidance cones. The second stage was used for a more manoeuvrable terminal flight at distances where it becomes necessary after the first stage detached and the missile was left on a mostly-ballistic course. If the first stage hadn't finished burning by the time target intercept occurred, well, a bigger boom would occur than would happen otherwise. The Pentagon had actually decided to phone Hannah to ask that she send ships outfitted with the Heavy SAM to Pearl Harbour to aid in its defence, just in case the Soviets fired long-range ballistic missiles, which current Patriot systems were not yet equipped to handle. They (i.e. Carville) discovered that she had already sent the ships out to rendezvous with their units heading to Pearl a few sentences into the phone call when they received a report. The General shared some friendly banter with the person he most respected in the world, then ended the conversation because they both had more work to do coordinating the various forces on assorted fronts and dealing with the logistical problems, largest of which was Metric vs. Imperial and the differing but similar weapons calibres.

* * *

_Hawaii, May 1982_

News that the Soviet fleet had departed Vladivostok, moving northward along the Soviet coast of the Sea of Japan, reached Pearl Harbour and the NKSDF Navy HQ at approximately similar times. Mark Jamison Shepard, who had been sent to Hawaii to help coordinate the garrison's fortifications of the islands and response to the anticipated invasion, predicted they were planning on heading north to pass through the Kuril Islands before striking southeast across the Pacific to Pearl Harbour. Jane Shepard, in command of Home Front and Naval Operations while her sister was in the field with the armies, agreed with this assessment. It would be ridiculous for the Soviets to attempt something like Operation Tyrannic (the SI amphibious conquest of Japan back in WWII) since they didn't have total control of the seas in the North Pacific. Soviet missile cruiser and destroyer squadrons, even those not of the cheap-deployment variety, tended to not do very well on average against American CVBGs, although the Americans had a tendency to take aircraft and escort losses in the process of fighting off the Soviet raiders.

Fortunately for the Soviets, their long-range anti-ship missiles weren't the variety employed in the "Dreadnought" bombardment ship, which were very cheap, mass-produced versions of cruise missiles through and through. Sadly for the Allies, the core formations of the Soviet Pacific Fleet managed to evade American submarine patrols using their subs to detect the American subs and navigating their surface ships around them. These were not the cheap-deployment warships that were usually seen, the Typhoons, [Sea] Scorpions, and Dreadnoughts. No, these were the _Udaloy_, first of its class of ASW destroyers (the second ship had been trapped in the Black Sea), the _Sovremennyy_, first of its class of anti-surface destroyers (2nd ship also blockaded and trapped, but in Arctic waters), 11 out of the 25 _Kashin_-class and 5 of the 8 venerable _Kanin_-class destroyers of the USSR. The only, very new, _Slava_-class cruiser was stuck in the Black Sea, but 2 _Kara_ class, 4 _Kresta II_ class, 2 Kresta I class and 2 _Kynda_-class cruisers were included in the large fleet bound for Pearl Harbour.

Screening them were 11 of the 24 commissioned nuclear attack subs of the USSR, the Victor class which had been kept wholly secret from NATO, and some 31 frigates of various classes. SI had known of the subs, but had told Romanov that "as long as you don't put any ballistic missiles on them, there is no reason why you can't have two dozen nuclear attack subs to defend the _Rodina_ (motherland) with, particularly if you tell them to sink some of the illegal whaling ships Japan sends out all the time to kill whales for the lucrative whale meat market in the name of research." This gesture of friendship, which formed a small part of the reason why the Soviets joined the Allies so easily during the Psychic Dominator Disaster (the doomsday scenario was a much larger part), was currently biting SI painfully in the ass.

The Soviets arrived at Ni'ihau, west-most (and second smallest) major island of the Hawaiian archipelago, which was privately owned and therefore off-limits to everyone except the owners' relatives, some natives, and occasional US Navy personnel. To prevent mass panic in the Hawaiian Islands, the military had enforced martial law before announcing that all residents should stay in storm shelters, bunkers, and any other type of enclosed, protected space during the battle against the Soviets. This had the side-effect of Niihau's population being completely eradicated by Soviet surface-to-surface missile fire, with the consequence that the island was no longer privately owned and therefore was open to development… right up until Jane Shepard bought the island roughly half a month later from the United States Government. She was interested in creating a naval base of her own for her units to rest at in the mid-Pacific, since the occasional unit that dropped by at Pearl tended to have more trouble than was worth it with respect to measurement systems.

After the fortified outpost and local houses on Niihau were levelled, the Soviets began deploying a large base on the island with multiple MCVs, activating the two ore drilling platforms on the island to fuel their efforts. They soon detected the predicted flights of Allied aircraft and missiles arriving from the southeast and the Sea Scorpions that had been cranked out of the quick-deployment shipyards began heading that way in preparation for flak fire. At the same time, the heavier warships began firing missiles and activating their tactical missile defence weapons, AK630 rotary cannons. Unfortunately for them, the detected attack was only a diversion while the real threats had bored in from the north and west. Fourteen _Los Angeles_-class nuclear attack submarines had been firing two Mk 48 torpedoes each from various points of the compass at the fleet near Niihau's southern tip, programming them to run for a good 30 kilometres at 40 knots before expending the remaining 40% of their fuel seeking out a target.

The _Udaloy_ was the first to pick up the underwater threats, and it immediately fired anti-torpedoes, which vectored toward the expected intercept zone against the larger heavyweight torpedoes, and noisemakers (these included electromagnets to fool magnetic sensors) while alerting other ships to do the same and to slow down their propellers. Since a noisemaker worked by broadcasting ship noises like propeller sounds and engine noises, quieting one's own propellers made them work better.

The intercepts were mostly successful, with one Victor-class sub, two Typhoons and two frigates sunk and one of the older destroyers damaged by a nearby detonation, but the aerial threats moved through the surface-to-air missile screen without apparent issues. It turned out that the detected threats were, instead of large strategic bombers like the signature size seemed to indicate, false targets generated by a small group of electronic warfare craft. Behind and slightly above the EW Craft were a group of F-15 and F-16 fighter-bombers, the Americans' long-takeoff strike fighters. Roaring in from the north were many more squadrons of F-14 Tomcats and F-18 Hornets flying from the carrier fleet.

The Soviet air defences were thus divided, even if they hadn't been, they still could not get their SAMs to intercept the planes before they fired their multitude of Harpoon missiles and turned back, releasing chaff and flares from their ECM pods, with the effects amplified by the EA-6 Intruder ECM craft. Two American jets, one from each attack group, were shot down, with one of the crewmen being retrieved alive by a local fishing boat. The division of Soviet missiles ensured there were adequate countermeasures to handle each missile group as the aircraft groups fled. One _Los Angeles_ attack sub was lost to a Soviet torpedo and another damaged before the rest retreated to a safer monitoring distance. The Soviets lost several ships to the volley of missiles, but as the Harpoon was sub-sonic most of the Soviet ships escaped unscathed.

The Soviet fleet detected the nearest Allied Carrier Battle Group via satellite scan shortly after establishing their base, and the two fleets began closing range quickly, three Allied subs being swept to the bottom of the sea by Soviet torpedoes as they breached the submarine perimeter. The Allies had been steaming toward the Hawaii islands from where they'd been hanging north of the islands, hoping for an early intercept before the Soviets could establish a base, but they'd been bypassed somehow by the Soviets. Closing the range a bit would allow aircraft cycling to go faster and thus more sorties over time as missions would be shorter, this was particularly notable on the SI carriers as routes to rearming and refuelling areas did not cross normal hangar movement routes, at least, not after their updates.

The carriers, including the American ones far to the north, turned tail after receiving intelligence (the stupid Allied satellite network was still down) that the Soviets were bearing down on them for a head-to-head confrontation, but it was already a bit late for the SI contingent, which had agreed to act as the vanguard and essentially as bait. Of the thirty inbound P-500 Bazalt and twelve P-700 Granit anti-ship cruise missiles, with ranges up to 550 kilometres and terminal active guidance, thirty-seven were successfully intercepted before they passed the fleet perimeter. These were cut down by a combination of short-range SAMs from the Light Missile Launchers and, for twenty-one cases, 20mm rotary gun fire.

Two P-500s and three P-700s evaded destruction though. The former carried a 950 kg high explosive warhead, the latter had a 750 kg HE warhead, but was faster and had a larger maximum range. They all chose the same target, the carrier _Quebec_. That ship's light missile systems fired off another six shots, only one of them hitting a P-700 due to the close range and high speed of the inbound missiles, and its 20mm rotary gun systems took out the closer P-500. That was a mere instant before the ship rocked hard to starboard as two large fireballs erupted on its port side, one near the bow and the other near the stern. Although the forward P-700 detonated roughly ten meters in front of one of the automated 20mm TMD turrets instead of finishing its dive toward the waterline of the ship, the ship's port-side stern still had a gaping hole several meters across which was rapidly taking on water, flooding two of the three engines attached to that pair of shafts with the size and location of the breach. The ship's keel was also stressed by the sudden knocks to it, but hadn't shown signs of damage yet. The aim of the TMDs was thrown off and the last P-500, which was slower than the P-700s but now had a better chance to close the range, smashed itself into the side of the hangar deck levels of the carrier while it was still righting itself from its sway to port.

Now, the _Quebec_ was looking at an earlier-than-strictly-scheduled retirement, assuming it didn't sink. The afflicted zone of the upper hangar deck, with armed or rearming aircraft and fuel vehicles, practically blew up, throwing large sections of the armoured flight deck several metres into the air and raining down twisted steel fragments around the ship. The bridge had not suffered damage however, so the coordination of the damage-control crews that were desperately trying to keep the flames under control was not as hard as it could have been. The carrier's speed dropped sharply as it had to shut off its two starboard shafts to compensate for the disabling of the two port shafts, only driven now by its two central propellers. The magazines and fuel oil bunkers, however, were well-armoured and had not been breached, other than a forward rocket artillery (highly useful for Carrier ASW defence, flares and chaff) magazine which had been pierced by the bow blast. The ammunition lighting off prompted several additional hull plates, serving as emergency blast vents, to be blown away from the ship.

Its speed dropped from a decent thirty-nine knots to fifteen knots painfully quickly with only two out of six shafts running. A Frigate closed distance to prepare to pass a tow line as the fleet retaliated with their Heavy SAM batteries programmed to behave as anti-surface missiles, firing a roughly equivalent number of missiles back at the Soviets, which were coming even closer with the SI fleet slowing down for the _Quebec_. The _Ontario_ and _British Columbia_ were launching their rearmed aircraft as quickly as their rebuilt (in 1970, now angled) hulls would permit with their four catapults while the Quebec was brought under tow and the main Carrier group continued to flee to the northeast. Since SI lacked any truly long-range anti-ship missiles other than the Heavy SAM's toggled mode, aerial attack was their best option against the Soviets, and it was there that they had the edge with the same Heavy SAMs being able to be launched in much larger volleys and thus having higher rates of success. That brought things to the next major design priority: Long-range supersonic anti-ship/anti-surface missiles able to strike from at least 500 kilometres away, and cruise missile sable to strike at more than 1200 kilometres, ideally, even if most of it has to be subsonic flight with a terminal booster phase. Right now, SI's air-to-ship missiles were dominated by Heavy SAMs for long-range duty and their own anti-ship missiles for short ranges (under 350 kilometres).

Due to the high level of compartmentalization on SI-designed warships, the hangar deck fire was brought under control roughly an hour later and the lower levels were clear of flames half an hour after the ship was hit, but the leak rate was still alarming and the ship was still listing harshly to port with several watertight compartments drowned. Long before that, however, even before the carriers had been attacked, a large contingent of five Frigates and twenty-one Corvettes had already split off the giant blob of warships to charge the Soviets directly. The Soviets had received an approximate sighting, and their satellites wouldn't pass overhead again at least for another twenty minutes, plus a cloud was moving in and the offensive fleet was running at near maximum stealth, with every weapon except the 20mm point defences and shipboard guns retracted and even the 3D Air-search radar folded up. However, instead of being used as 2D air-search (the horizontal span of the radar set was not affected, only vertical, which was only used to determine 3D location, usually for really close or high-elevation targets) it was shut off and the ships were relying on their radar receivers as passive radar in case of additional inbound Soviet missiles.

It took quite a few more minutes before the Soviets tried firing another volley, and since the offensive fleet had moved much closer than where the missiles would engage active guidance, the missiles simply flew by. A few were knocked down by Light Missile fire and 20mm TMD cannons, but since they weren't bearing nearly straight down the gun barrels, the hit rate was abysmal for the cannons, though the interceptor missiles did quite well, the sea-skimming missiles had still only left a fraction of a minute to ripple-fire as many Light Missiles from the rear launchers (had to present a minimal frontal radar cross-section…) as possible. The little warheads might be much more nimble and faster-accelerating than their larger counterparts, but they were also pretty short range, so they couldn't keep up on a prolonged chase, and over-the-horizon was out of the question. For a person standing on flat ground, the horizon might only be 4-and-a-bit kilometres away, but for a warship's primary mast upon which was its secondary optics suite? The horizon was _considerably_ farther than that. No, the Light General-Purpose Missile had been designed with engaging close-by threats, whether air, land or sea, efficiently (heavily-armoured vehicles excluded) with its HEDP warhead and relatively large manoeuvring fins.

Still, the SI fleet needed to close range for its mid-range anti-ship missiles to be capable of effectively engaging the Soviets, who had fired from a range of 400 kilometres. The SI warships and Soviet ships were closing the distance to each other at a speed of over 65 knots (fortunately subs had already been in place to fight the Soviet subs) or about 120 kilometres per hour. By the time the _Quebec_ had taken those three missiles, the range had already closed to a bit over 380 kilometres. The Soviet satellite passed overhead in a tense moment before the next volley of missiles, fired once the Soviets realized the Carriers HADN'T escaped their range using their superior speed, soared by the assault fleet. It was almost an hour (and a sunk Frigate, two sunk Corvettes, and new fires on the Quebec from another P-500 impact, fortunately only to the flight deck) after first blood that the Soviet satellite passed overhead a third time along with American aerial squadrons launching their third attack on the now somewhat reduced Soviet forces.

By this time, the SI fleet had, receiving some very loud (but encrypted) broadcasts about the Soviet progress from an E-3 circling far to their east, closed to a range of 280 kilometres from the Soviet forces. The submarine s of both sides had already met in the middle, battling it out with heavyweight torpedoes, lightweight torpedoes, and, from the SI side, cluster torpedoes. These had 5 smaller torpedoes packed into the front section of a larger one, to extend range compared to standard 200mm light torpedoes and hit probability over single 600mm heavyweight torpedoes, as unless the enemy fired enough noisemakers to draw off every single one… the little torpedoes did communicate with each other to divvy up the targets, one torpedo per target. This was like how the P-500 and P-700 missiles communicated to, when adequate numbers of missiles were available, have half target the main carrier of a task force and the rest distribute themselves among other ships.

The Soviet had inadvertently entered the range of the mid-range (280-320 km) anti-ship missiles the SI vessels carried, namely the N-WMS-300-1000. The Soviet radar-receivers began blaring alarms madly as the radars on the SI ships were unfolded and cranked up to maximum. A few moments later, after coordinates and vectors were received, processed, and fed into the ready-to-launch missiles that had just been extended back above the decks their launchers were on, the fleet launched a total of 104 missiles at their targets, each ship firing four of the missiles. They engaged their solid-rocket boosters and roared off into the sky as the two fleets continued to close range.

Soon, the Soviets detected the inbound missiles and began firing their own TMD guns and chaff, but the missiles, which had entered low-level flight at 50 kilometres from the targets, had already counted the number and locations/vectors of the targets and had locked onto them, so only a few were fooled by chaff. Besides, the warhead was a contact fuse head, and the front was reinforced enough that hitting some chaff wouldn't set it off and it would subsequently select another target to do an attack run against.

The Soviets lost enough ships to force a retreat at that, but they had bought enough time for their rapid-assembly naval forces to begin slugging it out with Mark's rapid-assembly forces around the Hawaiian Islands, including several Typhoons trying to infiltrate the harbour itself. Harriers were grounded by Sea Scorpions throwing up a flak screen around Oahu, which were answered by the thundering artillery guns of the cheap-deployment "destroyers". Typhoons became the targets of UAV-launched anti-submarine rockets, designed for shallow-water warfare and clearly doing rather well at it.

In other news, the epic slugfest between ships north of the Hawaiian islands, which had not stopped as the SI Offence Fleet cranked their engines up to maximum output to chase the Soviets down, had begun to involve torpedoes, anti-torpedoes and a hell of a lot of noisemakers. This was due to certain obvious reasons i.e. the surface ships passing through the submarine combat zone while still firing and reloading their missiles rapidly. The volleys of Soviet missiles inbound took out a few more SI warships before they fell silent, stifled forcibly by the sheer weight of the incoming volley. The naval bombardment was bad enough, but they also had to contend with air-launched American Harpoons and SI's N-WMS-300-1000s. The Soviets had a much slower reload rate for their missiles, and in some cases, using vertical launchers, couldn't reload them at sea. It was mostly this issue that doomed them as the SI warships reloaded their launchers repeatedly for volley after volley of missile fire. One by one, the major Soviet warships fell silent and in most cases sank into the sea.

In the meantime, the drone carriers, gunboats, and AA boats of the quick-deployment Allied forces that had been left to guard Oahu had driven out the Soviet intruders at the mouth of the Harbour, swept it clear of mines, and were now steaming toward Niihau. A few clashes with just-assembled Typhoons, Dreadnoughts and Sea Scorpions punctuated the journey. In the end, they converged on Niihau at the same time as the SI Offensive Fleet arrived, with only three Frigates and seventeen Corvettes left. one Frigate and two Corvettes had been sunk, a damaged Corvette had been left there to pick up survivors and lifeboats, and another pair of damaged ships, one of each class, had been ordered to turn back once it was clear they could no longer maintain at least thirty knots speed in the pursuit of the remaining Soviet vessels.

It took roughly two days to dislodge the Soviets from the Hawaiian Islands completely with how tenaciously they had dug in and how much hardware they'd brought. The fact that they could fabricate much of the supplies of war on-site didn't help make the battle any faster. By day, fusillades of torpedoes, missiles and rocket artillery would be exchanged between the fleets and from the Allied fleet to Niihau. By night, air-strikes and flak shells bursting eclipsed the stars.

But in the end, the under-prepared Soviet Navy, deprived of American will to let them surprise Pearl Harbour, lost. The Japanese strike in WWII had only hit Pearl Harbour because the Americans had known of it and let them do it, while keeping all their carriers away from the harbour. The Japanese ambassador had actually been kept outside the doors of the Department of State for several hours, from before the attack until news had been received of the attacks. That had been why the declaration of war arrived half an hour after the strikes. It was all a ploy by Roosevelt to stir up American indignation and thus allow him to take all sorts of sweeping measures to ensure the American Empire would be a dominant power in the post-war world. Sadly for him, there was a huge wrench in the form of the Shepards thrown into his grand strategy of world domination and a _Pax Americana_. By the time America had realized it, however, it had been a bit too late to change things drastically without starting another war, a war that would certainly not be supported by the rest of the Allies/NATO and might turn the world against their country. No, that was not an option…

Of course, the Americans were not remotely close to actually considering going head-to-head with Shepard, at least, not as of any time in the first half of the 1980s. This was fortunate, because they had much bigger, uglier, nastier, and more psychotic fish to fry at the moment, namely… Yuri.

* * *

A/N: Although I have seemed to contradict it here by speaking of capital artillery ships, please note that SI (Shepard Interstellar) will NEVER operate dreadnoughts. They will operate cheaper but about-as-effective alternatives.

REVIEW!


	5. Down South(s)

A/N: The Hama Massacre was delayed by a few months here.

As you can probably tell, I do not approve of evangelists, by ANY religion. In fact, all organized religion has done for humanity is allow people to rule other people's minds and act as an excuse for conflict. **If you are an evangelist, this is not a fiction for you, nor will my later works because they get steadily more alarming to your narrow worldview**, and will follow fundamentalist (i.e. dragging stuff back from all the way in the Old Testament) Christian materials to the letter right down to "if a woman is raped in a city and found then she must be stoned to death because she did not cry out" _**even if she was bound, gagged and drugged**_. (please refer to Deuteronomy 22:23-24). Also, bunk beds are going to be segregated because you can't have a woman take one bunk and later have a man take it, because for the guy who's been in the same bed as them, he'd have lain with both of them the same way (i.e. bunk buddies), please refer to Leviticus 20:13. You also are not allowed to sleep in the same bed with your parents, because then you'd have "lain" with them both in the same way. Of course, most of this is bullshit used by the Inquisition to attack people they don't like, but that should be obvious, because evil (read: control freaks i.e. the Church) never dies.

* * *

Chapter 5: Down South(s)

_Syria, late May to June, 1982_

Assad's regime had been under attack by a group of conservative Muslim fundamentalists for a couple months by May, 1982, and desperate measures would be needed to ensure Syria did not fall into their hands. SI actually, surprisingly, remained silent as Assad finally had to order the army to open fire, purging the Muslim Brotherhood from several cities and nearly levelling the city of Hama, a long-time bastion of traditionalist power. Assad had wanted newer economic policies for the masses, while the majority of people in the Muslim Brotherhood had been old money and felt threatened by the changes. On this issue, even though he was an American-backed dictator, SI presented the facts in a way that suggested they did not quite condemn him for his methods of counter-insurgency, namely Scorched Earth tactics. By SI's usual standards regarding such incidents, this was practically a declaration of support.

They didn't support him for no reason, after all, in counter-insurgent operations, one could only have two of the three desired objectives: Force Conservation, Distinction of Insurgents and Civilians, or Elimination of Insurgents. Assad couldn't afford losing his forces, and he needed to eliminate the insurgents, so he had to bombard cities that publicly supported to a large degree the armed and violent rebels. Also, he had to show no real remorse and make it clear that he would be perfectly willing to do it again for the tactic to work. SI actually agreed with this strategy, as violent, armed fanatics, regardless of faith or faction, were a danger to the survival of civilization, behaving like rabid dogs, attacking everything in sight that didn't bow to their tyranny, and therefore needing to be put down like rabid dogs.

On the other hand, if the rebels had been peaceful, even if they were armed, SI would have classed them as protestors and condemned Assad, then probably turned their Caucasus Front forces (assorted Palestinian SDF and SI Army units) around and conquered his country, again, right after this war ended. However, putting down violent extremists did not warrant forcibly inducting Syria into Client Statehood. As a side note, Syria was giving the Allies as much support as it could on the Caucasus Front, and this support redoubled after the insurrection was put down for good due to additional available resources. It seemed Assad wanted to stay on the good side of the Americans who had put him into power and kept him there.

* * *

A/N: Note that the Falklands War was delayed one month from real history, reason to be illustrated.

* * *

_South Atlantic, May to June, 1982_

In other news, Britain had apparently decided they could spare enough hardware from the war effort to send two of their _Invincible_-class light carriers along with a sizeable fleet to the Falkland Islands because Argentina had taken over said islands, South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands. Hannah Shepard was recorded to have raised both her eyebrows "Let's hope the Allied victory ends the tolerance the Argentinean people currently possess for the ruling junta and brings in a more democratic government. However, I do question Thatcher's decision of committing such forces as the southern hemisphere winter arrives and gale-force winds become a near-constant. Perhaps a large landing fleet to quickly storm the islands, along with sizeable special operations strikes on Argentinean airfields and port facilities, or air-strikes against said airfields, would be better than a protracted fleet bombardment or war of attrition?" When her opinion was released to the public, she only included the first sentence. However, she did, in June, phone Thatcher and ask her about the strategies being employed and how they needed to get the job done _quickly_.

According to SI's inside agents, the junta had debated for almost two months over whether or not to actually use armed force to take the Falklands, South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands, which Argentina had all laid claim to but had been under British control. In the end, hoping to salvage some of their crumbling legitimacy among the Argentinean people, they'd gone ahead with it. First blood against surface ships was the sinking of the WWII vintage ARA General Belgrano and the holing of a similarly old N-EC-1937 series ship accompanying her on the 2nd of June. The former had been hit by two torpedoes and the latter by one that broke the keel about one-fifth of the way from the bow, with the result of having to move in reverse toward their home port at ten knots so that the forward sections wouldn't take on even more water than they already had and so that the leaks would be manageable by the bilge pumps. Said ship had been sold to the Argentineans shortly after WWIII and anti-torpedo, or newer sensors for that matter, had not been fitted as the Argentineans had refused to purchase update contracts for the batch of ships they'd bought.

This strike had the effect that the entire Argentinean fleet was, foolishly, withdrawn to port instead of expended against the Royal Navy ships. If they had thrown themselves at the Royal Navy vessels, firing their missiles as much as possible with air support and their then-pincer-movement inbound vectors, the Argentineans could have inflicted enough damage to force the British to withdraw. After all, the British couldn't afford to send THAT many ships to the South Atlantic with the demands put upon them by the war in Scandinavian waters, the Baltic and the Mediterranean. This poor strategic decision would lead to a British victory for the Falklands Campaign and the collapse of the Argentinean junta government.

However, SI High Command was surprised when the British Type 42 destroyer _HMS Sheffield_ was lost to an Exocet missile strike. They should have been able to detect and shoot down the missile, but apparently their radar had failed and they alarmingly _did not have real TMD guns installed_! Jane Shepard found the report extremely disturbing with regards to British naval capability… it seemed they lacked the extreme combat paranoia of SI and the copied paranoia the US had. Apparently, they'd picked up the two inbound missiles on their Type 965 radar, then the operations officer told the missiles director, who queried the contacts in the fire control system. The launch aircraft hadn't been detected, and the targets weren't confirmed as sea-skimming missiles until smoke was sighted. Five seconds later, one missile hit the ship amidships, 2.5 metres above the waterline, and the other missed, splashing into the water half a mile off the ship's port beam. The missile did not explode, but the ship was still burning out of control and sank six days later on June 10.

From Jane's perspective, this was utterly insane. As soon as contacts on or near the surface were detected they should have been locked onto fire control for surface-to-air missiles and torpedoes, and as soon as the contact type was confirmed, firing of light missiles or anti-torpedoes should have commenced within approximately one second i.e. practically as soon as the firing buttons were pressed. This was not even including the TMD guns that would have been present on SI and American vessels.

To save weight, the British seemed to have adopted some rather… questionable construction practices. No, unlike the later-lost Type 21 Frigates _Antelope_ and _Ardent_, the Type 42 destroyer had steel instead of aluminium superstructure (and the material actually did not affect the sinking of the aforementioned frigates!), but it didn't have enough longitudinal watertight compartments and bulkheads (or at least, not thick enough or sealed well enough). In addition, non-SI warships today rarely carried any armour, even against light guns, this allowed the _unexploded_ missile's burning fuel to spread flames deep into the ship. The British warships also only had one high-pressure water main. American vessels typically carried at least 2 for any vessel above about 100 metres long, and SI warships (1975 generation) generally had 3 high-pressure mains, one over the keel and one per flank. Every or every other (depending on ship class) watertight section was fitted with a medium-pressure pump connecting directly to the underside of the ship, through holes in the hull usually covered by sliding plates, in case more than one water main was knocked out during a fire.

This, poor firefighting equipment, was the main factor that resulted in the British ship burning for a whole six days before it sank due to leaks from structural failures while being towed through high seas. SI was also pleased to note that their decision to retain traditional cotton clothing had been correct, as the Royal Navy also acknowledged the fact that synthetic fibres had an annoying tendency to melt onto skin and produce nastier burns than would occur otherwise.

Interestingly, much of the British fleet sent was made of frigates belonging to the grossly under-armed Type 21 class, to which the next two ships to be sunk belonged, the _HMS Ardent_ and _Antelope_ respectively. This class had steel AND aluminium in its construction, something SI believed was at best highly unwise in ships that are not built in and operate solely in the tropics (where year-round temperatures are fairly constant). It didn't show much in smaller-scale applications, but steel and aluminium had different thermal expansion properties, and with the South Atlantic storm season in essentially full swing, this was a very bad vulnerability. It resulted in bilge pumps constantly working near full capacity and hull patches being applied practically every other day. They were too small with little space for modernization, and were near their top-weight maximum anyways. They had been privately contracted and built to be cheap and, on paper, acceptably armed ocean-going escorts.

In contrast, 1975 SI Corvette had been built to pack as much flexible combat capability as possible without getting in its own way, and to hold out under attack. The main reason it hadn't fit another pair of S-WM-20 mounts along the side decks of the ship was ergonomics, since they'd fitted an onboard exercise room and recreation room on the lower magazine deck in those locations instead. The magazines alternated decks around the water-line so that one breach didn't make the bottom of the whole ship blow up and send the ship flying. They had also been trying to save a bit on weight and draught, plus the fire control systems had enough missiles to handle at once anyways with the autoloaders reloading the other launchers so quickly, since the attachment system was hardly complicated and easy to quickly fit the missiles into. Also, critically important, was the modernization level of the missiles compared to the positively ancient Sea Cat which had been introduced in 1962, was manually guided, and was sub-sonic. The reason the 1975 Frigate wasn't exceedingly heavily armed was also due to the fire control systems' limitations.

The Argentineans eventually lost that war in late June largely due to problems with their bomb fuses, since if they'd had a few more bombs actually going off the British would have been forced to back off. It was a good thing too, because it toppled the junta and prevented a local war with Chile. SI and America didn't deign to interfere to accelerate things over there… because they had quite more than enough on their own plates already without needing to take care of South America too. These things on said plates could be abbreviated into roughly two terms: "St. Louis" and "Bible Belt".

* * *

_America, June 18, 1982_

"Beautiful job there, Commander, I know you had your heart set on seeing the beach at Wakiki after you were done cleaning up at Pearl, but we have new business in St. Louis." Michael Dugan was pacing in the Oval Office.

"The heart of Missouri is critical to all our ground operations for the country, if we can cut the Soviet forces in two there and push to the Gulf of Mexico, we will have isolated a large portion of the Red Army on the East Coast." Carville stated. "The problem is that Yuri and his Psychic Corps have dropped another Psychic Beacon in the town."

"I never wanted to send you in against our own citizens, but those Psychic Beacons are turning upstanding Americans into Soviet-controlled killers. Move fast, move wisely… and try not to hurt any of my constituents, alright?" Dugan said that last bit with a smile indicating he was clearing trying to be light-hearted in the face of the serious situation.

"Unfortunately, you might have to. Tanya's strike team is in place and standing by, but we can't tell how long they can go before the beacon takes it's effect on them. It could be a matter of hours, or it could be days… one moment." Eva patched Tanya through.

The woman was checking up her reassembled Battle Rifle "She's not kidding Commander, if we don't move fast enough, within days, we could potentially have become slaves to Romanov and his slime-ball Yuri, although it's possible or even probable that the relationship is the other way around… there's nothing worse for a soldier than to lose their mind." Tanya had a feeling she would be immune to the device, but that was from testing salvaged material from the Washington DC Beacon in the labs against herself and other volunteers. She knew that given long enough, probably less than a week, her soldiers would succumb to the effects, but keeping pressure on the Commander to get it done quickly was hardly a bad thing. "I'm trusting you…" Tanya waved her hand to signal her men to cut the connection.

Eva looked at the camera she was transmitting from rather meaningfully. "Well, Commander, let's get going."

"Agreed, let's get moving."

* * *

_St. Louis, June 18-19, 1982_

If you take a lot of fundamentalists and manage to psionically control them in a way they were absolutely certain that only their God could pull off, then you have a very dangerous, fanatical army indeed. It was hard to mind-control someone with a Psychic Beacon unless they were surprised or left their doors open by refusing to believe in the possibility of it other than by an authority they were supposed to submit to. This meant any city in the Bible Belt or otherwise ultraconservative parts of America were exceedingly vulnerable, since even the majority i.e. the more reasonable ones, didn't believe that mind control was possible.

The manner in which the mission was initially attempted referenced the example of Washington DC when troops aware of the danger were unaffected. It involved sending Tanya in with a commando squad to destroy the Psychic Beacon deployed at the bombed-out (by Kirovs) and never repaired Busch Stadium. Unfortunately, quantity, when sufficiently large—of mad zealots—could in fact overrun quality and Tanya's squad found themselves relatively pinned down in a warehouse complex four kilometres from their target. They had been forced to drop ten kilometres from the target to avoid Soviet flak/radar coverage, jumping from an EC-130 at extremely low altitudes. However, a large mob of evangelical lunatics had assaulted them beginning at landing and Tanya was glad to have brought several sacks of additional ammunition. She was also led to being glad so many of these crazies had firearms, since captured firearms were being quite useful in keeping their ammunition supplies up as the people outside the complex chanted mantras about God and how they must "obliterate the agents of the Devil". They couldn't spare more than one shot per target, even with capturing the ammunition of fallen targets as they ground their way through the complex and the horde.

It was at 0100 on June 19th, five hours into the massacre and six and a half hours after the drop-off, that Tanya, taking cover behind a rampart built from corpses, decided enough was quite enough. Firing a salvaged AR-15 (M16 with a different name), with the same 30-round magazine of 5.56mm bullets and exact same settings of safety, semi-auto, burst and auto, she nailed one fanatic in the head after another. Apparently the mind-control was more brainwashing than actual tapping into a hive-mind, otherwise Soviet forces would be crashing down on their heads already. Although, intercepted communications DID say the Soviets were letting the berserk ultraconservatives and other mind-controlled civvies conduct their "Crusade" freely against Allied remnants in the city, to reduce Red Army casualties. This cannon fodder situation was getting annoying.

"Delta, Move it!" Tanya barked, and two of her squad members leapfrogged forward as the rest continued to lay down Overwatch fire to cover them. They needed to get out of the open as soon as possible. Tanya herself advanced next, raising her combat shield (she normally rarely used it, but it was good against the shotguns most of these evangelists had) and charging forward, still tapping one enemy after the next in the head with her commandeered rifle as she ran and gunned. Nearing a doorway into a hallway, it burst open and she put a bullet into the face of the first crazy, then dropped the rifle, which only had four rounds left in the clip, and began moving out of the doorway before the others in the hall could bring their weapons to bear.

She smacked the barrel of the unfired pump-action shotgun so that it flew out of the hands of the dead man still falling to the ground in the hall, the gun doing a back-flip in the air. After it turned about 170 degrees, Tanya grabbed it by its grip and fired it once into the group of gunmen crowding into the hall from the doorways on both sides before whipping her arm back out of the doorway. Sliding her combat shield back onto the slots it anchored to on her back, she whipped one of her submachine guns out from between her back armour and the shield and took off its safety. Since there was only the moaning of wounded, she flipped up the small mirror attached to her weapon's scope and crouched to ground level, then looked around the corner with it. Finding no active threats she moved into the doorway with her SMG firing into the wounded to silence them, only to jump back as a Molotov Cocktail came whizzing out from one of the doorways along the hall. She grabbed a grenade from her belt, dialled it to 4-second time fuse only instead of contact/time detonation, yanked the pin out with her teeth, cooked it for a second, then tossed it through the flames. It bounded off the wall and into the room the Molotov had come from.

* * *

Archivists' Note: We are aware that normal people cannot yank grenade pins out with their teeth, as proven several decades later on a show called MythBusters. However, Tanya Adams and other members of the Shepard family have demonstrated disturbing skeletal system tendencies that include the capability of taking chunks out of wooden planks, provided they fit, with their jaws.

* * *

A shout followed by an explosion meant that some of her other squad members, already in position, could pop up from beneath the window frames and hose down the rooms with bullets while the evangelists were distracted. Once they'd secured the structure and several nearby buildings for a brief rest and fortified it against the lunatics—their last hideout had been demolished by suicide bombers driving several tanker trucks into it, although the crew cleared out as soon as they saw the bastards coming and got away—Tanya got working on coordinating support from Theatre HQ.

Mark Jamison Shepard had been nominally put in charge of the forces on standby north of St. Louis, consisting of five SI Field Divisions (mostly moved back from the East Coast, where they would be soon replaced by six freshly-formed divisions) and seven US Divisions. He was the first to get the report that the commando assault was not working due to excessive resistance from mind-controlled civilians. Hannah had a sinking feeling as Mark relayed the information to her. If they buckled even slightly here, Yuri and his Psi-Corps would simply continue using similar tactics elsewhere, perhaps within the Soviet Union itself, capitalizing on the Allies' unwillingness to get the job done by any means necessary…

No, it had to end here. "Commander Mark, we need to raze that city to the ground."

Mark looked taken aback "What? Those are at least good two hundred thousand American lives we're talking about here, just in the city proper."

"Yuri is using terror tactics that capitalize on our unwillingness to do what has to be done, this allows the Soviets to recuperate and inflict losses on us without taking nearly as many losses as they used to when in battle against us. It's time to send out the strategic bombers, Mark, have them clear a lane from Tanya's current reported location to as close to the Busch Stadium as possible with fighter escort." Soviet Kirovs were guarding that airspace and the flak cover was heavy enough missiles wouldn't get through… so it had to be conventional bombs, which were much thicker-skinned than missiles. "Make that zone at least four hundred metres wide, and instruct them to use cluster bombs." She was quite relieved her cousin's squad hadn't been destroyed after their last communication cut out (the aforementioned tanker truck attack).

Mark huffed "Do you know what you are doing?"

"Saving tens of millions of lives by making sure Yuri and Romanov understand these psychic tricks will not hamper our efforts. This demonstration of will, to be conducted without any hint of remorse will make it clear that this strategy is useless, so that the Soviets don't employ it again, and again. Do you understand now, Mark?"

The much younger man sighed, then nodded "Alright then… it doesn't seem like we have much of a choice…"

"Hey, at least I'm going to take the blame, not you or Dugan, right?"

* * *

There was only one minor problem: Apparently, the blind faith taught into inhabitants of Mississippi practically from birth made many of them continue to believe Yuri must be someone sent by God to redeem humanity from its sins, even after the Psychic Beacon was taken down. Tanya barely escaped the encroaching mob burning down Busch Stadium on top of them with singed hair, some painful burns, and some scratches. Some of the commandos didn't make it out in time as the structure collapsed on top of them. The crowd began fighting itself as the more enlightened, reasonable ones tried to stop the madmen, who shot them dead only to have other enlightened ones fight back rabidly.

SI's armoured columns thundered into the city after an hour of leaflet drops and air-superiority missions against those pesky Kirovs raining bombs down on the city and firing missiles at aircraft in the area. They were blaring as loudly as possible from their jury-rigged loudspeakers (read: sub-woofers and other speakers "liberated" from abandoned hardware stores outside the city) that "Anyone firing will be shot". However, when properly fuelled, fanatics were not known for giving up, and even after clearing the Soviets from the city, they had to deal with the evangelists. This was a task the Americans decided to fob off on the SI forces, with rather thorough and gruesome results.

By the next morning St. Louis and its immediate vicinity (which had also been controlled) would be in Allied hands and be down to under a fifth of their population before the battle. This included roughly 5,000 people who had been evangelists but had some sense knocked into them after a while (usually a la baseball bat, rifle butt, or frying pan, although a few died of head trauma). The other 50,000 had been sensible people who had been simply mind-controlled, not totally brainwashed, and had survived the in-fighting against the psychos. And yes, there had initially been vastly more sensible or at least mostly sensible people in the city, but they had mostly been thrown into the grinder first, until the Beacon was levelled and most of St. Louis went to hell, directly to hell, without passing Go, and without collecting 200$. Obviously, Tanya's squad were much better at corpse-looting for supplies of all sorts than many would think, so they collected a hell of a lot more than just 200$ while waiting for extraction by the armoured forces thundering into the city, but that was beside the point.

However, SI and the Americans had also taken well nearly ten thousand casualties in the battle to take back the city from the Soviets. The Shepards' army also took additional casualties during the elimination of the fanatics, who were lashing out at everyone who wasn't another fanatic screaming things such as "For God!". The fortunate thing, according to most objective analysts (i.e. most analysts, excluding those in America during the Bush and Santorum eras) was that the entire Bible Belt was not put under mind control on a city-by-city basis and mobilized against the rest of America, probably as Psychic Beacons weren't easy to set up, were not at all easy to manufacture, and took some time to actually work. This saved many tens of millions of American lives, something that would come back to bite Shepard (and Humanity) in the ass shortly after the First Tiberium War, when Rick Santorum would be elected President to succeed Obama's two terms.

In hindsight, Hannah would come to realize that she should have allowed the Soviets to give her an excuse to stamp out the disease of American Christian Fundamentalism before it could corrupt too much of her southern neighbour. However, at the time, she celebrated the ass-kicking that was delivered to the Soviets and publicly expressed her sorrow ("it was too bad that…") that so many of St. Louis's residents had been beyond salvation that more than 70% of the city had needed to be levelled. However, she didn't apologize or show any actual remorse, not that she felt any. Her belief was that: _If you were so easily manipulated into fanatically fighting in the name of… not something relevant to human civilization such as life, love or liberty, but something as (historically) hindering to mankind as _**RELIGION**_, you should be thanking your executioner, because madness like yours had done quite enough damage. Starting with the Egyptian persecution of Jews and of course later on the fucking Crusades and the modern troubles in the American South and Middle East, religion has done nothing but acted as an excuse for one group to oppress or outright attack another, it is time this madness ended_.

* * *

_July, 1982_

After some starving of the Soviets' fuel stocks (by sinking supply ships at sea and cutting off transport by land), the sweep to the Atlantic coast was led by SI's forces from both northern (25th through 30th Divisions) and western (17th through 24th Divisions) directions. This was as Mark and Carville had wisely contributed the opinions that T-1955/1965s, despite the age of the designs, had a much better chance of surviving frontally charging prepared (even if extremely battered) Soviet defences than M60-series vehicles. The lighter, taller, less manoeuvrable and less-armed American tanks had a nasty tendency to be plastered over the terrain by Apocalypse Tanks, an undesirable outcome to say the least despite the M60 being cheaper to manufacture than SI tanks.

Due to strategic necessity, America had been paying SI large amount of funds to keep the Maple Leaf with Bars war machine clanking along against the Hammer and Sickle. Though SI was extremely economically powerful and with large stocks of old equipment, it had complained that it did not quite have the resources at the time to more than double the size of its already considerable military within a couple short years. Since they had practically relied on SI T-1965s to deal with advancing Apocalypse Tanks without taking horrible losses (Flak Tracks are very good against choppers), the Americans had no choice but to comply and pay up for the aid they were getting.

The final smashing encirclements on the Eastern America Front came in South Carolina and western Florida, after a month-long, grinding campaign of artillery bombardment of seemingly random zones of defences and then armoured forces ramming through at similarly seemingly random zones which may or may not coincide with the levelled zones. Most often, these were the same zones, but sometimes the artillery would shift target zones about a minute before the tanks charged the newly-targeted sector. Soviet vehicles that had been rushed to patch up the established breaches would often have trouble reacting. Yes, the Soviets changed their tactics rapidly to deal with SI's assault strategies, but the attackers adapted just as quickly or took advantage of things anyways.

For example, in one breakthrough battle in Alabama, nearby Soviet mobile reaction forces had split into two sections, one being sent to prepare to react to a bombardment of a nearby section of defence line where SI armour seemed to be gathering for an attack based on satellite intel. Yes, the intel was correct, but it was wrong as to just how many units would be pouring through the gap at once since half of the vehicles had actually been _**towed**_ to the staging zone by other vehicles of their class. Notably, safety brakes had to be turned off and drivers put into the towed vehicles to make sure the brakes were a little active on the down-hill stretches just in case.

When powered off, the towed vehicles didn't show up on thermal scans. Thus the initial Soviet reaction forces had been overrun and the second group, mostly made up of Apocalypse Tanks, was dealt with by a combination of ambush by assault choppers armed with anti-tank missiles and by sheer numerical advantage. It didn't take many breakthroughs over the weeks of skirmishing and large-scale battles for things to end decisively in the favour of the Allies, even though it was up to American forces to conduct most of the clean-up operations after exploiting the huge chasms SI tore in the Soviet battle lines. This was generally the role of infantry of all sorts (light, motorized, or mechanized) in blitzkrieg warfare, but the Americans sure weren't complaining about the rate things were going at…

While this was happening under Hannah's command, Mark was eroding the Soviet forces in the Rocky Mountains, and eventually successfully pushed the Soviets all the way back into Texas and even Mexico in some places. After that campaign concluded on August 2, he was given a "couple days" to… er, "rest". Yeah, as if that was ever going to happen…

* * *

_August 2, 1982_

"Soviet forces retreated or surrendered in several key areas today. Find out where on War Watch at 9." That was on TV before Eva interrupted Mark's "break".

"Don't get too comfortable, Commander, no napping on the couch for now. Romanov still has plenty of fight left. Apparently the Soviets thought we wouldn't notice this research facility in the Yucatan." She highlighted it on a map of North America, then zoomed in. "By the readings we've been getting, they're trying to replicate Einstein's Prism Technology." She showed aerial footage of some Central American ruins. "Your destination is the ruined Mayan city of Tulum, near the Caribbean coast, we'll be paradropping a SEAL team to help you locate and destroy the facility. I think you're gonna like these guys." She smiled at him.

"Yep, I probably will. Thanks, Eva… back to work then… they said two days, hmpf. Apparently day equals half-hour now…" He snorted derisively (he'd been off-duty for precisely one hour and two minutes before being called by Eva) as he drew up the briefing and began to plan the attack on the base, teleconferencing with the SEALs assigned to his command.

After the planning was done, he asked Eva "Where's Tanya when you need her?"

"She's got her own missions to deal with right now, Hannah had her either working or on standby for the past few weeks, and it's probable that she'll have something else to do really soon. We expect the SEAL team to be enough. If they're not, well, we can always try the brute force method. We control the oceans, so they're not getting away, at least, no further than the Panama Canal."

The young man sighed "Well, here I go infiltrating things again. Lets hope it turns out like last time… famous last words, Mark." He shook his head with a small, rueful smile. "Hey, Eva."

"Yes?"

"You notice how this summer all the action's been in the south? First the Falklands thing in the South Atlantic, then liberating the south half of America, now heading into southern Mexico?"

She smiled cheekily "Maybe it's because the Soviets initially attacked from the south? And right now southern Mexico is their best hope for evading our notice while experimenting with Prism Technology, since they can't exactly ship it over the sea with how they're cut off? On the other hand, we need to finish things up quickly because the Europeans are currently taking a lot of heat from the Soviets. Once they realized they couldn't reinforce their forces over here anymore with the blockade in full force, they committed to trying to conquer the Europeans before we can get involved. Shepard has informed the President who has relayed it through General Carville that she's planning on transferring the bulk of her forces to the European Theatre before the autumn comes."

"Well then better get this done quickly if we don't want to deal with excessive losses." They both knew he meant many things, including potential losses on the European Front, but also the question of boring through Mexico quickly enough to prevent the Soviets from discovering anything useful.

* * *

_East Coast of Yucatan Peninsula, August 4, 1982_

"The Soviets really chose a bad time to do this." Mark groused about the temperature as they infiltrated a village near (i..e 10 kilometres from) the Soviet base, noticing several fenced areas holding heavy military hardware. Mark was astonished to spot, three M60A1 tanks and two IFVs, apparently captured from the same Allied base that the Prism Towers the Soviets were experimenting with had come from. "It appears however that the Soviets haven't gotten any more intelligent since Operation Dark Night." He said plainly. "Where are the resistance fighters we're supposed to be rendezvousing with?" Spotting another fenced enclosure where a group of locals seemed to be being held prisoner he commented to the nearest SEAL that "I have a feeling this might be a trap…"

Mark was actually surprised when it turned out at first that it wasn't as much of a trap as he'd expected, although he'd still planted charges he'd borrowed from the SEALs on the vehicles' bellies under the pretence of inspecting them for Soviet devices. The resistance fighters, once liberated, took roughly twenty minutes to give a crash course in tank-driving to. This was as the SEALs were much more efficiently used on the ground, and with only one fire-team there wasn't enough manpower to man the vehicles anyways. A squad of Engineers and another fire-team of SEALs soon arrived via Nighthawk Chopper and were handed over to Mark's command.

Mark ordered the Nighthawk to airlift the second SEAL fire-team and two engineers across the large bay the Soviet base bordered, using the low clouds to conceal itself, and land on a peninsula south of the Soviet base. They were to head in and pick off guards as able and set up all Soviet ammunition or fuel dumps they could find. As soon as shit started going down, the primary squadron would charge in from the northeast of the base, where only a Sentry Gun guarded a small entrance through the concrete walls of the base. The Engineers would hack into and commandeer one of the prism assemblies the Soviets had constructed, to see if they could assess the progress the Soviets had made on the system, and if possible, as it would still be hooked up to the Soviet power grid, use it against Soviet vehicles in the base to at least whittle down their numbers while the SEALs took care of everything else.

The base seemed rather empty and preoccupied about something as the group infiltrated the installation and turned the Prism Tower-equipped Pyramid on the few nearby Soviet tanks to great effect (thankfully, none were too close for the Pyramid to fire upon, as the angle of depression of the beam had some limitations), probably since it had two towers linked together on top of it and the Soviet tanks couldn't elevate their guns high enough to strike at the prism assemblies directly. However, when Mark and the SEALs were gathered behind the pyramid letting the Prism Pyramid do its job while terminating any approaching infantry, they got a rude surprise. Mark had been suspicious enough to take the main cap off the detonator he had with him after he ordered the vehicles to shelter behind the pyramid and they didn't do anything, and this turned out to be a good thing.

The cannons and machine-guns of the captured M60A1s were levelled at them and the IFVs, in Minigun configuration, were also targeting them "Put your hands up!" The so-called "resistance fighters" called from inside the vehicles, being too smart to confront a group of SEALs on foot.

"Well, it had to happen sometime." Mark said calmly, pulling his hands slowly from his pockets from where he stood, half-obstructed by a bunch of ruins, and moved them upward as they told him to do. There was a whistling overhead just before they all threw themselves flat, Mark jamming his fingers on the detonator as there was a bright flash from the Prism Tower. He deduced that the Engineer staffing the tower had probably been killed by the traitors, and was suddenly very glad the pyramid couldn't fire at too low an angle of depression. A bunch of unstable-sounding fizzing and zapping noises emanated from the top of the just-discharged Prism Pyramid and the prism array exploded. Seeing that the vehicles before them were wrecked, he took a chance "Get into cover men!" He shouted and running around the pyramid to the other side, gunning down a couple Conscripts unfortunate enough to stand in his way. There was a series of whooshes overhead and rocket trails before the west end of the Soviet base was embroiled in a smattering of several hundred modestly-sized craters from explosions. "What the fuck?"

"We're getting a transmission from the SI warships standing by off-shore, they are dispatching assault choppers to your location for extraction and will deal with the rest of the Soviet forces if need be." Eva announced "Odd that the Soviets would never have picked them up on radar until they fired those rockets… and those EMP artillery shells. Guess those 200mm cannons are good for some things after all, even though the concept of a main gun armament is a bit, uh, obsolete." There was one really great thing about EMP artillery shells: They were much simpler and cheaper than EMP missiles, and one going off wouldn't affect others.

The first T-1962 to tear through the breach at the northeast of the base fired an APFSDS shell from its 110mm cannon into the side of a Rhino tank which had fired first but (barely) missed, and that was all that the (somewhat) lesser tank wrote. The second shredded an approaching Flak Track with a simple, cheaper (and against light vehicles, more effective) HEAT shell. At the same time, vehicles came in from the southern approach to the base. One rolled up next to Mark and the SEALs sheltering with him behind a Mayan ruin. The commander hatch popped open and a familiar blonde head poked out "Surprised to see me?"

Mark raised an eyebrow "What do you think? How'd you evade Soviet radar anyways?"

Tanya shrugged as she jumped down from the tank, to present a lesser sniper target, and watched the two dozen tanks she'd brought thoroughly wreck the Soviet base in the facility, which had been small as the Soviets hadn't wanted to attract too much attention "Turns out the chopper deck retained the old cargo deck function from the first SI ship generation. Retracting all the weapons, closing all the ports, and folding off the radar lets us get pretty damned close to the shore with how our ships are constructed." She was referring to the slight angling outward of the deck level of the hull relative to the waterline level, and the way everything topside was built with the walls leaning outward about three degrees. This was to provide greater stealth against not only surface radar but also aerial radar. "We hugged the coast, got into the Soviet radar installation's blind spots and landed on the beaches, after you got into the base. So when we saw you in trouble with our own Nighthawk modified for spying, including long-range telescopes and cameras, we decided to pop open the weapons and give them a good show of how we do things. The Frigates are giving artillery and chopper support from farther offshore while the Corvettes that carried them landed the tanks on the beaches… and so, here we are now." The T-1962 was the preferred tank for Corvette-based landings since it was lighter than the T-1955 and took up less deck space than either of the other tanks, plus it had a turret so was more flexible in assaults than the T-1965.

"How'd you know I was here?"

"Carville talked to Hannah about the Prism Technology being stolen, and told her about the mission. She knew that the resistance fighters here had been captured, which Carville and our intel departments didn't, and said they could have been mind-controlled or outright replaced. By then you'd already gone into radio silence, so the best way to keep you alive and still get the job done was, well…" There was a series of loud explosions from the other side of the base that shook the ground and Tanya watched a flaming oil barrel rise temporarily into view over the top of the ruins on a pillar of fire, then fall back to earth. "Are the Soviets still so stupid as to pile their fuel and ammunition dumps all over the place?"

Mark snorted "It certainly seems so."

Tanya shrugged "Well, let's capture this base, salvage all we can, and get the hell out of here."

"You don't have to tell me twice." Mark grumbled as he led the SEALs to the SI APC that had rolled up to them, and buckled up.

* * *

A/N: I realize that this war may seem a lot shorter than the others, but it DOES only last two years… from 1981 to 1983.

REVIEW!


	6. Back To Europe

A/N: Who does it sound like I'm portraying as the good guy based on the following unit names? Preliminary US unit names for WW6: Crusader, Templar, Paladin, Prosecutor, Regulator, Enforcer, Dictator, Tyrant, Liquidator, Obliterator, Raptor…

Preliminary GLA unit names for WW6: Defiant, Protector, Resistor, Liberator, Defender, Air Scrubber (AA), Vigilante, Martyr, Upholder, Armed Protestors (ahem Angry Mob ahem), Guerrilla, Technical…

Dear **Nenfaer**, please see the opening paragraphs here for the funny classification thing.

**SupCom: Babylonia will not update unless I have average of more than 3 reviews per chap (To get Ch 9, 10, 11 respectively, 25, 28 and 31 reviews are needed, and so on from there)!**

* * *

Chapter 6: Back To Europe

_North Atlantic, late August, 1982_

The funny thing about the warships steaming alongside them in the Allied convoys heading eastward was that SI's "Frigates" were about equivalent to US Cruisers in weight and superior (about double) in armament load due to rather more efficient designs with regards to weapons and more importantly _**sensors**_. The sad fact was that the _Ticonderoga_ class, the first of which had been launched last year (and not yet commissioned), had been reclassified from frigate—the US term for all air-defence-oriented ships smaller than cruisers but bigger than destroyers—to destroyer and finally cruiser in the US Navy through the 1975 reclassification. That had been deal with a perceived "cruiser gap" with the USSR. The shallow American people had been persuaded that their six cruisers were disadvantaged compared to the Soviets' 19, even though they had 21 "frigates" equal to or better than Soviet cruisers.

From 1950 to 1975, the US Navy had defined cruisers as the largest surface gun/formerly-gun based combatants, the next smaller class being frigates, and then destroyers. This had led to the need for a reclassification when political comparisons and competition made whoever didn't support adding more cruisers seem like they were weakening American maritime superiority over the Soviet Union. To prevent something similar from happening after seeing the problem in the US, SI had published numbers it had obtained from the USSR (as a gesture of friendship from Romanov) with respect to size and displacement of vessels alongside numbers for their own 1975 ship classes. They'd made it perfectly clear to the public that they never intended to compete with either of the two superpowers in maritime might, and they didn't need to compete with the USSR anyways since they had larger numbers of "modern cruiser-analogues" in their first (rather large) batch of 1975 Frigates than the Soviets did.

The Shepards had received a large number of pre-orders for the 1975 Corvettes from various countries which once, or in many cases still, employed the 1937 Corvettes as Coast Guard ships. Where those were within modern corvette sizes, the 1975 generation was certainly NOT, it was in the frigate weight range and carried firepower comparable or superior to a cruiser of any other country. This led to the derisive label of "pocket cruiser" as a reference to the pre-WWII _Deutschland_-class heavy cruisers which had been labelled "pocket battleships".

The new ships' heavy armament did not preclude living conditions as the hull had been designed to be relatively wide laterally, especially at deck level (while the beam was given at 20 metres, that was for the waterline beam, it was technically about 22 metres at the deck). The Light Missile Launcher, 150mm main gun and Rocket Artillery mounts had to draw from the lower magazine deck (lower center of gravity offered better stability) so their reload rate was somewhat lower than for the 20mm TMD guns, Medium Missile Launchers, and the mission-dependent mounts (the last mounts on the 3 running down each side of the ship's superstructure). Notably, flank weapons mounts next to the superstructure were exceedingly uncommon on modern warships, and were only excused by the broad beam of the ships offering enough volume to carry more components inside the hull.

While the Americans were focusing on massed air defence for their cruiser-sized ships, SI was more oriented toward "flexible but comprehensive load-outs" and "cheap shore bombardment". There was talk of researching a 300mm rocket artillery piece and mounting some barrels onto a possible 2000-generation of warships for deep strikes, but at the moment that was just that, talk. The 150mm rocket artillery had more than enough reach to support most shore landings anyhow. New rocket models offered up to 35 kilometres and it was expected that the system could support an eventual maximum strike distance of around 45 kilometres.

However, there were also problems with the SI warships. First was that the missiles and rockets, when their mounts were extended above the deck, were vulnerable to enemy fire which, if high explosive in nature, could potentially set them off. They were carried in larger packs at once than other contemporary designs, which were usually twin-arm launchers or box launchers held up and well away from the main hull, so if they blew up it tended to be more painful for the ship. Yes, the magazines' doors were armoured like the rest of the magazines, but it was still a glaring weakness insofar as potential shrapnel damage to the superstructure was concerned. If the enemy hit one of the missile mounts and managed to make it deflagrate, well, the turret would be thoroughly out of commission until you could get to a drydock to have it replaced. Since they needed to leave the sides relatively open for the autoloaders, missiles exposed above deck weren't even protected against 20mm cannon fire, though they did put enough panels on the outside of the mount that they could in theory briefly withstand heavy machine gun fire. The rocket artillery tubes had armouring against the same, but were still relatively vulnerable to any weapon used practically in anti-ship combat.

Second was a distinct lack of redundancy in the sensors, in that they didn't mount even two of any particular radar (though their Surface Search Radar was a 4-faced Pulse Doppler device), nor did they have four radars doing the same thing like the Americans tended to do. This had been a large part of what had allowed them to pack so many weapons into relatively small hulls without compromising standards of living too much. This meant that if any of the radars were knocked out, or if the only dedicated radar receiver was knocked out they could be in real trouble. However, the typical deployment of these ships in sizeable packs travelling together means it's most often not too much of an issue to adjust the formation so that more-blinded ships were on the inside.

* * *

A/N: Upgraded BM-21 Grad ("Hail") rockets can reach 40 km, and they're only 122mm, 150mm rockets should be able to manage nearly 50 km in my humble opinion.

* * *

A more morbid issue of the time was that Hannah Shepard would come to GREATLY regret not having Phyllis Schlafly immediately put into an "accident" following her campaign that successfully stopped passage of the Equal Rights Amendment in the USA as of June 30, while Dugan had been trying to push it through despite and perhaps because of the war. The woman had been gloating on TV for almost two months now and it was beginning to grate on Shepard's nerves enough that she now refused to be in the same room as a TV tuned into Fox News or CNN. Schlafly was a working professional LAWYER, EDITOR of a monthly NEWSPAPER, regular speaker at anti-liberal rallies (Hannah wondered often in later years whether she should have saved human suffering by "accidentally" bombing those…), political activist, and someone who campaigned for _full time housewifery and motherhood_. Just that astonishing hypocrisy should have rung alarm bells in Hannah and Jane's heads as soon as the STOP ERA campaign began despite the war (ultraconservatives never rest, something the Shepards took a while to learn), but it didn't because they were too preoccupied. They did however state that "Schlafly is a hypocrite who has achieved the ideal of family and career by pushing countless millions of other women down so that she may climb to that ideal over their enslaved bodies."

Schlafly had told _Time_ magazine in 1978 that she'd cancelled speeches whenever her husband thought she was away from home for too long. She would continue in this vein for decades to come, poisoning the minds of the American people. In March 2003, she would say in a speech at Bates College that marriage meant a woman had consented to sex and therefore there was no such thing as marital rape. A year before that she had told the _New York Times_ that the quality of women's lives improved in the last decades of the 20th century because of labour-saving implements such as the indoor clothes dryer and paper diapers. She had six children, her eldest son was gay (but she claimed he followed his mother's views, which was funny because he should have been a man with his own mind according to her ultraconservative beliefs) and the youngest son founded Conservapedia because he felt Wikipedia was too liberal (in other words, he couldn't tolerate uncensored reality and the fact that he wasn't created specially in the image of a pie guy in the sky). Unfortunately for the people of America and especially the women of America, the Shepards never bothered to purge the Schlafly family. They thought of them as a non-threat with how society was naturally clanking forward and would leave them in the ash-heap of history where they belonged. This tragically turned out to not be the case.

Other interesting events in the past couple months included the latest Iranian assault into Iraq being ground to a halt, but that was about it and comparatively irrelevant in the grand course of history. However, new information was about to be brought to Hannah's attention. "What?" Was her first, supposedly intelligent, response to the aforementioned news.

Apparently, General Carville had thrown one of his paperweights at his door in response to annoying, persistent knocking, accidentally opening it via the weight bouncing off the door and pushing the handle down at the same time as he ducked behind his desk to pick up a fallen document. Two Allied guards who had been passing by the hallway were killed by the explosion of the terrorist sent to assassinate Carville detonating his explosives—they had just started trying to accost him upon seeing him at the door when the door opened and he set the explosives off. As a result, Carville had six broken ribs, a cracked collarbone, a broken leg, some lacerations from broken wall fragments, and a concussion from getting blindsided by his desk, which had absorbed most of the damage and rammed him against his bookshelf. In other words, he was going to be out of action for at least a couple of months, mostly due to the punctured lung he had gotten.

So she was going to be working with Mark Jamison Shepard on defending Einstein's lab from Soviet attacks so that he could complete some Chronosphere experiments… _Okay then, at least I didn't get assigned some ultraconservative general from the American South who I'd need to run over with a tank before he'd stop telling me and half my army to go make him and his army a crap-load of sandwiches. Actually, if that happened, I'd probably just send him poisoned sandwiches, right, what was I thinking?_

* * *

_Black Forest, late August, 1982_

Mark was there first with his rapid-deployment forces since they could bring in the men first and manufacture many of the materials of war on-site. They would be able to hold off the initial waves of Soviet offensives which would use their own rapid-deployment forces while the main thrust of the Red Army in this sector, thirty-three divisions containing roughly seven hundred thousand troops, would follow two or three hours behind them (total Soviet forces in the offensive were about two and a half times as many but they were mostly holding the flanks). In the meantime, seventeen SI Divisions constituting three hundred forty thousand soldiers were four hours away to Mark's west. Mark's available defensive forces only totalled nine divisions around two hundred thousand troops, including nearby German Army (Deutsches Heer) forces that were already under heavy attack by Soviet vanguard units.

The T-1965s that the Germans had purchased from SI years ago proved surprisingly still combat-effective against the T-75s the Soviets were fielding, but they were still taking losses. Their armour scheme and components had not updated in the last five years since the German government had decided it preferred the Americans to SI as an ally since the former was economically more powerful. So, since the Soviets were being quite benign, the German Army began acquiring M60s which were cheaper and easier to maintain, at least for the newer units, and began decommissioning their old SI-bought vehicles. It seemed they could have gone with better ideas such as renewing the maintenance contracts instead of selling old, decommissioned vehicles back to SI to be recycled for materials…

Mark was being engaged on three fronts from the north, northeast and east with German picket bases in the area under constant attack and was manoeuvring his handful of T-1965 tank destroyers from one prepared firing position to another as each position came under fire from Soviet rocket artillery. His own rocket artillery units were executing similarly hit-and-run manoeuvres to slow down the Soviet vanguard units which he estimated at roughly seven divisions with a hundred and fifty thousand troops on each axis of advance. The problem was that he couldn't afford to fall back much at the moment since he had to maintain defensive elasticity for weathering the main Soviet offensive force. He had established a base and fortifications at Einstein's lab and another base some distance to its northeast, blocking the main armour-friendly routes to the lab through the dense old-growth forest. The three outposts in front of his main base were blocking Soviet forces advancing from the Calw, Tubingen and Stuttgart axes respectively. The Soviets had attacked into Germany from Czechoslovakia after taking that country, and swept across southern Germany where most of the newer units were stationed.

Along the Polish border, on the other hand, they hadn't had much success. This had something to do with the fact that the older German Army units were stationed along those lines. Some of these units had gone so far as to privately pool money among the soldiers to mail-order some replacement parts from their old ally for their tanks instead of decommissioning them. When asked after the war why they did this, one general who asked that he remain unnamed said "the men and we generals didn't trust the quality of cheap American steel tanks, mail-ordering some parts was cheaper than their lives as far as the men were concerned. Two of my friends got put under investigation for corruption because they were spending requisitioned funds on it, but it was put down and forgotten as soon as the war started and the value of the vehicles became obvious through the media."

Oh, and yes, it was in fact possible to mail-order certain relatively shorter-lived hardware parts from SI. However, that only had enough relevance here to make it so that while the veterans of the Wehrmacht were pinned down on the Polish frontier, the main bulk of the Red Army, not expecting much of a breakthrough there, had been moved south and had spilled west from Czechoslovakia. The M60 was much easier to patch up than SI's vehicles, but it also was overwhelmingly easier (for a T-75) to wreck or disable in the first place. The result was that the Germans were defending in the northern end of the Black Forest while Italian and Spanish forces attacked the left flank of the Soviet advance from Austria and Allied forces in the north kept the pressure up on the Soviets' flanks.

Einstein's laboratory was located at approximately 48.5 degrees North, 8.8 degrees east. The northern Soviet force was the most likely to have a clear run to the lab base if the outpost there fell, while the other two would have to cut through his main base first… Well it seemed the decisive phase of the battle was coming soon, because things had just taken a turn for the worse. Kirovs had just penetrated the aerial patrol perimeter and were now closing in on the eastern outpost. He would have to collapse his defensive lines at least slightly to conserve his forces while they whittled down the advancing Kirovs. This was not good… he ordered them to strip down the defences at the eastern outpost and began moving them back, sending out half his armoured reserve to defend against the Soviet armour previously held more or less at bay by Prism Towers.

In the meantime he called for more air support only to receive a negative from the Luftwaffe (this was the generic German word for "Air Force", not directly descended from the Luftwaffe of WWII). The Kirov advance was thicker in areas on the advance's north flank, seemingly trying to push the Wehrmacht further north, and the Luftwaffe was already working hard keeping the Polish frontlines static with Soviet probes here and there now and then. Yes, to doubtful readers, the term Wehrmacht was still employed colloquially by the Allies/NATO for all German armed forces together whenever the Germans were fighting a defensive or initially defensive war, since it literally translates to "Defence Force". The French Air Force were containing the westward advance of the northern Soviet elements and assisting the Luftwaffe as much as possible. The Italians, Spanish and Austrians had their own major problems to deal with, and the British… well, they'd need another half an hour to be able to field any aircraft in his combat zone. That was okay, he could hold on for half an hour. Shepard's air units were helping with holding the northern side of the main Soviet advance in check, operating over the heads of the German Army forces fighting alongside the British Army troops on that front line.

So far, nearly every element of the Allied forces in Europe except the strategic reserves had been committed to some front line or another. The only ones close enough to help him within the next few hours would be Shepard's fresh troops that had just come over the sea or the Italian Strategic Reserve to the south. Mark agreed with the High Command consensus that the Italian forces should be held back to make sure it could meet a potential Soviet breakthrough in Austria if the main Red Army assault force for this offensive decided to wheel left and attack there instead. In the meantime, Einstein and crew had planned on packing up the labs and moving them, but it would take a minimum of two days to disassemble everything and move it. Therefore Allied High Command had decided with the time frames involved that they wouldn't be able to get away anyhow and had ordered Mark to make a stand or at least fight a delaying action.

To aid him in this endeavour, pressure would be intensified on the other lines against the Soviets. This would in theory keep Soviet High Command busy and therefore prone to making mistakes with how they tended to over-centralize their command structure. These other lines included, on land, attacking along the Polish border, a minor offensive north from Bulgaria with Turkish Army and Greek Army forces, a brief blitzkrieg into the Caucasus by PSDF and SI Army forces with Turkish backup, and of course sustained pressure on the southern Germany thrust's flanks. At sea, the battle lines extended to attacking the Soviet Black Sea Fleet's blockade of the mouth of the Black Sea to increase paranoia about an amphibious attack across the Black Sea, clashing with the Soviet Baltic Fleet, and, the most drastic of all, launching an amphibious invasion near Vladivostok based from Korea and Japan.

However, by the time Allied High Command had set these plans into motion it was a bit late and now the Soviets were breathing down his neck as Mark's armoured columns performed a slow, grinding fighting retreat. Aerial squadrons were holding back the Kirovs from reaching the front lines as best they could while surface-to-air missile batteries were firing synchronized, focused fusillades of missiles to help down Kirovs one by one as quickly as possible. Thankfully, half an hour after the additional fighter support from the British became available, the results showed it was working and the ground front received orders to prepare to stop retreating. By this point, the Soviet main body was only two hours away according to reports and Shepard's armies were still three hours away. Mark ordered another ACV (Assistant Construction Vehicle) with the new long-distance energy receiver/transmitter systems fitted to go forth and establish an outpost/defence line node to help in this task.

The Outpost that an ACV could deploy into would allow him the power grid coverage to establish additional forward defences such as prism towers, which were quite effective at killing tanks and even more so at murdering less armoured vehicles. Since WWIII, energy transmitter technology had been developed in Einstein's labs, so tanks no longer had to navigate through/move under labyrinthine mazes of power cords when moving through an MCV-based base (unless it was a Soviet base). However, long-range transmitters were quite costly and unwieldy, so putting them in every structure was deemed unrealistic. The fact that this made war seem more like a video game was not lost upon the commanders or even soldiers involved, but it was considered a necessary evil since it was an efficient way to operate skirmishers and supply bases.

On the other hand, major battles usually still involved huge armies crashing into each other in traditional fashion. However, it was often the skirmishes that would decide battles before they even began. Mark had a feeling this was not going to be the case here other than the question of whether he could hold the middle perimeter and parts of the outer perimeter long enough for the SI main body to arrive to have the Soviet main body crash into it. He was, of course, completely correct in this assessment.

Mark had repositioned his main strategic reserve to the north, and had now manoeuvred them to outflank the Soviet northern vanguard should they try anything. He would need to turn this battle into a series of offensives if he was to hold enough ground and have enough troops to hold an enemy at a ratio of more than five to one (it was rather less drastic if one factored in the local German Army forces). He ordered the German IFVs to launch a probing attack on the Soviets to snipe a few tanks from their left fore-flank (the southeast) with TOW missiles and stir them up a bit.

Sure enough, that managed to distract the Soviets enough that when his main armoured forces thundered out of the forest from the west the Soviets were not in a good formation to meet them. Their need to manoeuvre into positions sheltered from fire from the west offered the attackers a slight advantage that Mark was going to press as much as he possibly could. The Soviets lacked aerial recon, and that was their downfall as additional Allied forces swarmed in from behind them, from the north and northeast. Mark might only have had six divisions directly under his command, but the five he'd committed to this attack were enough to, using the element of surprise and assistance from the battered German Army division based at the northern outpost, wipe out the Soviet northern vanguard, which only had five divisions' worth of strength at the beginning of the attack. However, he had lost a quarter of his available tank destroyers and more than a division's worth of vehicles and troops. This was not a sustainable method of fighting, but he didn't have much of a choice in the affair. He could only call for reinforcements, hopefully there would be a couple divisions of something—hell, he'd even take paratroopers at this point—in range to help bolster his defensive forces.

Paratrooper forces were not forces built to defend against, well, anything. They were at best fast-attack forces designed for hit-and-run or surprise attacks. Depending on the military they came from, they were most commonly used as light infantry and be suited to low to medium-intensity combat. However, there were a handful of paratrooper units that violently violated this rule, some were scattered over several nations, but the vast majority of these units belonged to the Shepards. They were designed to be skirmishers, to snipe valuable enemy assets quickly from long range using their missiles and remain mostly out of enemy effective range. Driving a Paratrooper Assault Vehicle was well known to be an uncomfortable job given the sharp turns one often had to pull, but they helped the things and their crews survive in a hostile battlefield without much armour.

The light vehicles came in three flavours these days, the old Combat and AA models and the new Mortar PAV. Recent refits had fitted the relatively new A-WAG-90-20A mortar in replacement of the A-WAG-60-20 series mortars formerly used in all SI mortar-mounting units except those in light infantry units. The rest of NATO had 60, 81, and 107 millimetre mortar calibres, and there was talk of introducing a 120mm mortar series. SI decided to do things the cheap (and more importantly METRIC) way instead with only 60, 90 and 120 (the last was planned but had yet to be implemented). The Mortar PAV fitted two 90mm mortars side by side, with an autoloader feeding them from the breech, with a lot of radiator fins built into the barrels and a dedicated fan to circulate air over them. Firing at maximum firing rate (15 rounds per minute) tended to be annoying on the A/C in summer, but in winter it made the heating easier. Usually though, firing rate was restricted to 6 shells per minute per gun.

Now the question was whether or not the reinforcements, two divisions' worth of paratroopers all saddled up in PAVs, would be sufficient to allow Mark to hold off the Soviets' primary advance long enough for the SI Army to arrive.

* * *

A/N: Felt like making chapters shorter and less tedious to read.

REPEAT: **SupCom: Babylonia**** will not update unless I have average of more than 3 reviews per chap (To get Ch 9, 10, 11 respectively, 25, 28 and 31 reviews are needed, and so on from there)!**

REVIEW! (Here AND over there!)


	7. The South German Salient

A/N: "So what's more likely? That an all-powerful, mysterious God created the Universe, and decided not to give any proof of his existence? Or, that He simply doesn't exist at all, and that we created Him, so that we wouldn't have to feel so small and alone?" Ellie Arroway, in _Contact_ (1997)

I would like to warn you that eventually we'll see an "Agent Guardian" in this universe around the First Tiberium War, an "Agent Guardian" who will remain around for quite some time. Yes, it begins to turn into a pseudo self-insert sometime in about 30 years story time, and yes, "Agent Guardian" will have a nemesis (a neo-fascist I knew from high school, with evilness quotient x2) cast into this too. No, there will be no romance, at least, not bilateral and even then not in any way that the characters even come close to realizing until it's too late. I have been playing SC2 online recently, hence glacial updates even on SupCom: Babylonia (btw I referred to Agent Guardian over there already in vaguest terms). I have also been feeling a bit de-motivated lately for no apparent reason… Must be the decadent laziness and governmental indoctrination of America getting to me.

**I recommend you draw a diagram of this battle or it will get quite confusing in the later stages.**

* * *

Chapter 7: The South German Salient

_Black Forest, late August, 1982_

The Soviet main force was one and a half hours away to his east and the SI Army was two and a bit hours away to his west when the paratroopers he'd called for arrived. It was just in time too since Mark was planning a quick sally to wreck the Soviet forward bases and thus delay the logistics of the Soviet main force slightly. Hopefully they would be a bit too low on fuel by the time they arrived at the staging bases for the Soviet commander to risk making a push. The PAVs would be perfect for such a surgical strike… or so Mark thought.

It was a disaster with respect to the surgical part, because the Soviets had stored a good bit of ammunition in their forward bases. Ammunition plus explosions did not equal surgical. No, it equalled fireballs with a lot of flying debris. A full quarter of the PAVs never made it back to base, slagged by Tesla Coils, blasted apart by Soviet tanks, or in some cases killed by the recoilless rifle shells of flak troopers, but the damage had been done by massed volleys of 200mm missiles, 90 mm mortars and of course machine-gun fire against the infantry. The AA PAVs didn't have many close-ranged aerial targets available (they were however still firing at the Kirovs far in the distance) so their 20mm rotary cannons (mounted on the left side of the turret) were put to use chewing up infantry, and, to greater effectiveness than machine-guns could manage, Terror Drones. Still, multiple PAVs fell to the little four-legged spider-like critters, but there was no time to try to rescue surviving crew or salvage the wrecks. The rest of the PAVs could only run and gun against the Soviets that were chasing them. The order was soon given for a general retreat to a nearby rally point.

That had been in response to an additional Soviet battle group arriving before the main body and moving to outflank the PAV forces. Mark's pickets had detected them and now he was pulling the PAVs out before they could be cornered and smashed by stronger armoured forces that they could not withstand and would not be able to outrun. Yes, Combat PAVs with their 200mm anti-tank missile main armaments could seriously hurt or, more likely, outright wreck enemy tanks, but their armour was very light. Even with the latest, most advanced technologies available, it was limited to protecting against regular 20mm shells and armour-piercing heavy machine gun fire (of the 14.5mm variety the Soviets preferred) from the sides and top and armour-piercing 20mm shells to the glacis and front of the turret. This meant they would get banged up engaging even Flak Tracks directly since the latter had enough explosives in their shells to damage the PAVs' armour.

The PAVs were speedy raiders for good reasons, and Mark believed the Soviets to be aware of this. Since they had been putting up more defences at their east outpost (east relative to himself) he chose not to attack them with his PAVs. They were valuable glass cannons after all… This would turn out to be a tactical error because the Soviets were building all those towers at once, yes, but they were doing so very slowly due to lack of workers/machinery in the base, using the appearance of doing so to dissuade Mark from attacking with his paratroopers. However, the Soviets did not get away without a good hail of mortar rounds falling on their heads from run-and-gun tactics.

A few things had to be pointed out about mortar designs: the payload per shell, including effective HEAT round diameter in HEDP rounds, was quite a bit larger than similar-calibre cannons or howitzers simply as mortars had lower accelerations for the shell and so less structural reinforcement was needed. As a result, 90mm mortar shells could deliver a much larger than expected punch, and against the topside armour of tanks that weren't reinforced specially against it (T-1955 and T-1965 series vehicles of all marks, plus the T-80 Apocalypse, were reinforced and T-1962s or T-75s could be modified to be reinforced) it was a great threat. Regardless of that, a handful of hastily planted Soviet land mines claimed a toll on the attackers as they departed the area at high speed.

In the meantime, Mark had rearmed slightly a la War Factories and provisioned his remaining seven divisions' worth of tanks for battle, digging in with his infantry and setting up his available Prism Towers while waiting for the War Factories to forge more parts from ore gathered in the field from automated mining shafts that ore miner vehicles were impatiently waiting around. Fortunately, the Soviet vanguard forces' MCV-based fast-deployment bases could not build T-80 Apocalypse Tanks in the field, since they were much more complicated than the simple, mass-production T-75 Rhinos. However, unfortunately, that also meant only M60A1s and T-1962s could be manufactured in the Allied war factories in terms of MBTs and the SI-standard tungsten carbide sabots were unavailable for the latter tank. Being forced to use simple field-manufactured steel sabots, hoarding the tungsten shells for the Apocalypse Tanks, meant the T-1962 was actually somewhat inferior in a straight-up fight with the T-75 Rhino. This was, of course, absolutely terrible since they were grossly outnumbered anyways. Fortunately however the T-1965 tank destroyer could still easily punch through a Rhino's armour in one shot due to sheer gun power even with only steel sabots to work with.

They struck out to the northeast, the heavier tanks pushing trenches through the ground and casting Soviet mines aside while lighter vehicles followed behind them. Mark had committed almost all his armoured and mechanized forces to this attack, about four divisions' worth of men and materials. He was hoping to destroy another Soviet vanguard detachment without sustaining too many losses, since the three and a half divisions of infantry and damaged, dug-in tanks back at the base wouldn't hold against a sustained Soviet push. A few detonations damaged some dozer blades, but the soil absorbed enough of the shocks that the blades were not ruined and could still literally plough on. A wing of British Harriers and Phantoms roared by overhead, firing their Maverick missiles from a safe range and peeling off to return to their respective bases for rearmament. A few moments later, Soviet surface-to-air missiles sped by after the fighters as Mark's forces closed with the enemy, tearing across the sparse forest near the fringes of the Black Forest (sparseness from selective logging).

Another few minutes after that, the Allied tanks began pouring out fire from the cover of the trees on two sides of the Soviet forward base. At the same time, a whistling hail of IFV-fired mortar and howitzer shells of various NATO calibres drizzled down on the Soviet outpost set up where the German Army outpost used to be. The Soviet did something that was not entirely unexpected, a manoeuvre called the Crazy Ivan i.e. charging the opponent's battle line while firing away. Mark was monitoring the battle in his command tank when a T-1962 to his left cooked off after one out of far too many hits penetrated its hull and ignited the ammunition and fuel. The turret shot skyward on a pillar of deflagrating materials and smashed upside-down next to the vehicle quite a few moments later. In those few moments, his command tank, one of the few fully modernized T-1965s on-hand in Europe outside of the force roughly an hour and a half way to his west, had pounded two more shells through two T-75 Rhinos. Mark had taken advantage of the rear driver compartment to set up some mobile command hardware so that he could follow the front lines and coordinate things better since the bases he'd assembled right now could handle themselves, but the offensive might not be able to, particularly if the Soviets pulled jamming devices out of their asses as a surprise.

After inflicting a significant number of casualties on the Soviets within fifteen minutes of fighting, the main armoured strike force withdrew to the west the way they'd came as the Soviet main body approached ever closer. Quite a few tanks were lost on the Allied side, but they'd managed to wreck almost all of the Soviet northeast vanguard force's armour effectively. They had also taken a huge bite out of the east vanguard branch's tanks with PAVs attacking through nominally Soviet-controlled territory from the north and east of that base with some vehicles watching the lines to the east. This had the side effect of preventing them from sending their armoured and mechanized forces out to outflank and encircle Mark's main offensive force while he was hitting the northeast outpost. However, the two divisions of paratroopers had, by now, been whittled down to, counting the flyboys, just short of twenty-six thousand soldiers, a bit under 65% of their nominal strength.

The pace of modern warfare was quite remarkable, Mark reflected as they pulled back to let the Soviets lick their wounds. They had conducted two large-scale hit-and-run operations in a mere fifty minutes and made it back to base well before the Soviet main force began pouring into the immediate area from the east. The remaining tanks were repaired as best as possible, then re-provisioned. They took up dug-in positions the infantry had prepared in the last hour and a half, and prepared to weather the storm for at least an hour.

Soviet V3 tactical ballistic missiles rained down on the Allied positions like a swarm of locusts, but the trees which the Allies had piled against their base buildings or on top of them absorbed much of their explosive power and the shrapnel produced by tree bursts weren't effective against armoured vehicles, though the infantry took quite a handful of casualties. After ten minutes the Soviets decided they had to swamp the position quickly and eliminate it before the SI main force could arrive from the west. If that happened, they could not possibly get through Mark's bottleneck to Einstein's lab quickly enough before it could be reinforced. Mark was very glad he'd left the tree cover more or less intact in his operational area, because it would take the Soviets too long to plough through to the lab on any route other than through his main base. The SI Army was only an hour away with the last report, which meant he had to hold out for that long…

The snipers stationed in the woods engaged the enemy first, picking off exposed infantry at random intervals, but a few hundred marksmen could not make much of a dent in an army over a thousand times larger than they in numbers, at least, not quickly enough. However, the Soviet advance was delayed by two minutes due to PAVs hitting their flanks a couple times and causing them to rearrange their formation somewhat to counter the threat. Several dozen more PAVs were lost despite mad manoeuvring through the tree cover as they wrecked a much larger number of Soviet vehicles with their oversized anti-tank missiles that practically guaranteed one-hit-one-kill except against the glacis plates of Apocalypse Tanks and T-1965s. A T-1955 would need to be lucky (and have reactive _and_ cage armour fitted) to endure a hit, and a T-75 would need even more luck even if outfitted with as much anti-HEAT protection as feasible (short of appliqué layers of armour). A T-1962, unless outrageously modified, simply would not survive a direct hit.

Yes, the T-75 has more anti-HEAT protection than the T-1962 does, mostly because the Soviet tank was noticeably heavier armoured overall. Against sabots, it was vaguely inferior, and that was enough for the much lighter Allied M60 tanks to kill it with sabots or massed HEAT fire (which was much easier to penetrate with if it was via mortar, but tank shells sometimes had to do). The SI tanks relied almost exclusively on sabots against Soviet vehicles, but they got the job done well enough…

The tanks opened up after the first-line Prism Towers fired their first volley and immediately retracted their tower tops downward behind the hills they were situated on the reverse slopes of, to recharge in relative safety from counter-fire. The tank lines opened fire next, distracting most of the Soviets from remembering the approximate positions of the Prism Towers. However, enough of the Soviets remembered that the V3 launchers far in their rear echelons, guarded zealously by Apocalypse Tanks and Flak Tracks, began launching their tactical ballistic missiles toward the Prism Towers. Some were intercepted en route by IFVs configured with the standard light missile batteries or chain-gun turrets. SI AA APCs took down a handful too, but there were enough that got through that seventeen of Mark's hundred first-line Prism Towers were ruined by the large warheads the V3s packed.

Before the first tactical missile had shook the ground, the tank line had already been engaging for nearly five minutes and, since they'd detected the missiles being fired and knew they'd been exposed, the Prism Towers were extending and firing as often as possible. The remote-controllers of the towers were even going so far as to extend just before reaching full charge, firing as soon as they hit full charge at the nearest available target or killable target, and retracting immediately thereafter. Soviet tank fire still managed to blast the firing arrays off of a dozen more towers in the next ten minutes though. The Allies were making them pay for every centimetre of ground in blood, but the Soviets were desperate enough to get rid of Einstein that a little blood wasn't a problem to them.

The snipers in the forest began pulling back as the Soviet infantry advanced through the trees, threatening to overrun them completely. Allied infantry were also pulling back in a fighting retreat while Mark gave the okay to the artillery units. 155mm howitzers bellowed en masse a moment later as the gunners had already had the appropriate angles and vectors dialled in. Tree bursts were grossly (literally if one considered puddles of viscera gross) effective against infantry, especially if there were any weak points in their armour. Soviet Conscript armour only covered the torso just like everyone else's body armour, so the tree bursts shredded most of their legs out from under them with flying fragments of wood and bark. The Soviets were forced to hurriedly embark their infantry onto their Flak Tracks before pushing through the forest, led by tanks and protected from effective artillery attack (i.e. direct hits) by the tree cover and their armour. They believed it would be foolish to move on the open road due to artillery and mines, and they would be correct, although Mark had only seeded enough mines to make the Soveits cautious enough not to proceed on the open road.

Half a kilometre closer to the Allied bases, anti-tank mines began taking a toll on the Soviet vehicles pushing through the woods. Since dozer blades were not an option due to the need to push down some of the smaller, younger trees (tank shells were highly inefficient at doing so) to clear the way, and moving to the clearer routes would expose the Soviet columns to Allied artillery, mines and armoured or Prism Tower fire from the other side of the valley, the Soviets could only disembark some of their infantry to clear the mines. Snipers took a heavy toll on them, but suppression fire from the Soviet vehicles allowed them to push forward slowly, though still fast enough that they would overrun Mark's forward base before reinforcements could arrive.

This was, of course, a problem. Mark's best countering possibilities were to deploy more tanks to the field via the War Factories and hope to slow the Soviets down by constant skirmishing. The Allied IFVs, when equipped with combat engineers, would transform their turrets into repair rigs that proved immensely useful in patching up the T-1965s in the skirmish line, although the tanks tended to slow down with more and more patches simply because they were basically additional plates hastily welded onto the outside of the damaged armour. Mark ordered the lines to do a fighting retreat, falling back in organized fashion while continuing to trade fire with the Soviets. By the time they'd reached the second defence line however, on the line of hills and ridges on which the Prism Towers were situated, the infantry was down to 70% strength and armoured strength had dropped by a quarter. They'd worn away a chunk of the Soviet tide, but it was not nearly adequate.

The howitzers were pounding away in large volleys, clearing out strips of forest so that they could rain shells down onto the armoured vehicles below. At the same time V3 missiles whooshed by toward the artillery batteries that were hurriedly relocating. The Soviets had finally analyzed firing solutions for counter-battery fire… This took the artillery heat off the main battle line, but that applied for both sides, and the Soviets could afford far more losses than the Allies could.

The northern section of the second defence line buckled under the pressure of a rolling mass of Apocalypse Tanks smashing through. Mark vectored half of his few remaining reaction forces into battle— these were mostly the Assault and Transport Choppers of one of the two paratrooper divisions assigned to his command. The Combat PAVs on the ground sniped as many of the enemy Flak Tracks as feasible with their missiles before being forced to withdraw, or, in the majority of cases, perishing under the guns of the Apocalypse Tanks. Mortar PAVs had also taken a toll on the Soviet air defences and AA PAVs used TV-guidance to use their missiles against Flak Tracks.

The loose groups of assault and transport choppers vectored into battle, raining rocket pods and 40mm cannon shells on the masses of lighter Soviet vehicles and firing volleys of anti-tank missiles at the Apocalypse Tanks. The spearheading Assault Choppers, despite better protection, were cut down almost immediately by fire from the remaining Flak Tracks, moments before most of the vehicles were obliterated by the rocket pods that had been in flight. The remaining choppers, mostly Transport Choppers which had less armour and only two pylons per stubby wing, had been the ones to carry mostly missiles instead of all rockets. Mark had been expecting his lines to buckle sooner or later, and that was why he'd ordered the Assault Choppers to be fitted with rocket pods only, since they'd mostly serve as damage sponge duty.

Side door gunners on the Transport Choppers showed the Soviet infantry on the ground—in many cases escaping vehicle crews—as little mercy as the Soviet flak troopers were showing ejecting chopper pilots. After seeing what had happened to most ejectors, the pilots of crashing craft, particularly those who had been wounded when their craft were disabled, began resorting to piloting their helicopters to crash onto Soviet vehicles, whichever ones they could manage to land on. The Apocalypse tanks responded with their own surface-to-air missiles and the choppers fell almost as quickly as the tanks did. In the end, only the Soviets remained at the site of the confrontation, but at a shadow of their former strength. One thousand of their tanks, a quarter of the T-80s, had been wrecked, and many more of their lesser vehicles had been ground to scrap, the eight hundred assorted choppers of the paratrooper division had done a disproportionate amount of damage to a large axis of attack of the Soviets…

Having reloaded, the remaining PAVs were back, sniping at the Soviets from three sides of their salient and summoning from the skies a rain of mortar shells able to kill a T-75 Rhino in one direct top-of-turret hit. They were also able to wear down an Apocalypse Tank's armoured anti-air missile mounts given enough time or luck, but fortune favoured the bold, and in this case that was the Soviets. After five minutes of regrouping, the Soviet push continued and a second iron fist came in from the east, complete with Apocalypse Tanks fitted with Iron Curtain emitter arrays. The air support Mark called in was found sorely lacking against the sheer quantity of the Soviet armoured forces, something that many factions had previously envied about Shepard's armies and which the Soviets seemed to have emulated. His self-propelled artillery was beginning to approach the duty of direct-fire gunnery, and he couldn't have that. He ordered the second air group he had control over to circle around and hit the eastern push from the northeast—there were far too many Flak Troopers in the northern push for him to get away with anything at all left of his helicopter gunships.

The Soviets were expecting Mark to retreat under the pressures from north and east at once. Well, they were wrong, lethally wrong. After withstanding the Soviet attack waves for more than twenty minutes, Mark was ordering his armoured forces to concentrate on the east side and counterattack on the left wing of the eastern Soviet advance i.e. along the south edge of that push.

This unexpected manoeuvre managed to sandwich the Soviet eastern contingent into a crossfire from three sides, each aiming at weak, exposed areas of the Soviets turned toward the other sides' threats. Hemming them in somewhat meant the artillery could pour all the shells it could get out into the pocket, and the strategic bomber support Mark had finally obtained access to could carpet-bomb the semi-enclosure. The Soviets were busy fighting on all sides, believing they could hold off and beat back this pathetic attempt at encirclement by inferior forces without too much trouble.

Clearly, the Soviet commander had grossly overestimated Mark's level of mercy. Several hundred tons of 200-pound gravity bombs thundered down on the heads of the Soviets within the space of a few seconds. Being dropped from stratospheric altitudes made their approach sudden and almost undetectable to soldiers focusing on groundside events. Soviet tanks ruptured violently under the power of blasts against their tops or flipped over and lighter vehicles were flung into the air even more spectacularly. However, Mark quickly received news that the Soviets were making another push with their Kirovs for air denial if nothing else. That was not good, because he still needed to hold out for at least another twenty-two minutes before Shepard's armies could arrive in the area. Thankfully SI howitzer fire and rocket artillery fire had begun raining down upon the Soviet advances, slowing them significantly with the sheer weight of the volleys.

The large-scale armoured battle lasted another ten minutes between surviving Soviet vehicles—these were surprisingly common—and the Allied force before the latter successfully disengaged. In the meantime, Mark's main base came under direct attack from the north which began grinding the infantry defending that region up bit by bit. Prism Tower after Prism Tower were eventually toppled and several War Factories were ruined before Mark's main force crossed the few kilometres back to base and began engaging the Soviet Northern Force, pursued by the Soviet Eastern Force and fighting a rearguard action as they moved.

Mark had begun the transfer of materials from the main base to the lab base back when the Soviet Northern Force had defeated the choppers sent at them. Although the transfer wasn't complete, he had no choice now but to demolish the sensitive technologies like Prism Towers and order his forces to back up further toward the lab base. He only had four divisions' worth of soldiers and rather less materiel left, standing against an advancing tide of twenty-one Soviet divisions' worth of soldiers and materials. Even though Mark had been inflicting losses on a ratio of two and a half to one, it wasn't enough. He just didn't have the forces to pull of overrun-type attacks that could afford him more than a four-to-one kill to loss ratio, the sort of ratio he would have needed to hold his main base. However, now he only had to hold the winding 7-kilometre road to the lab for another twenty minutes (Shepard's ground troops had encountered unexpected traffic delays) against the grinding tide of Soviet forces that were rolling forward down the road and through the artillery-thinned forest on both sides, heedless of losses and ploughing into the Allied line.

The Soviets wanted to capture Einstein and the technology in his lab, so they weren't attacking that area with V3s. In the next twenty minutes, Mark's forces were boiled down to two divisions' worth of soldiers. Many, too wounded to stand on their own, were propped up against the walls of the foxholes, spraying rifle fire into the advancing Soviet infantry groups. All unit cohesion had been ruined and many units no longer existed by the time slightly over three hundred thousand SI troops broke into the operating area from the northwest. The Soviets reoriented to face them and a rain of V3 missiles took out a couple hundred vehicles, but given Shepard's tradition of hideously over-mechanizing—this was part of why they were so demanding about vehicular reliability when designing things, not very many people were available for maintaining each vehicle—they were equipped with a bit over seven hundred and fifty tanks (not even counting APCs or self-propelled artillery) per division. Given the necessary forces to guard the artillery units, this could be approximated as a bit under seven hundred tanks per division.

When you didn't quite have quality on your side, quantity was a definite necessity. No SI tank, even after all the updates since the WWIII years, could stack up to the T-80 Apocalypse Tank one on one except the T-1965. The assault gun (tank destroyer, whatever you wanted to call it) in question had far inferior firepower mobility than the Apocalypse due to a fixed gun mount, and so was placed into SI field units sparingly and used most often for defensive duty. However, there was still something to be said about the sheer _ridiculous_ quantity of armour pouring onto the field. Even if the Soviets hadn't noticed it from their pickets being allowed to report before being silenced, the ground shaking and the collective noises of the engines would have told them enough.

In video gamer lingo of the future, this sort of force would be known as "mad tanks".

Soviet tanks formed battle lines ready to take their opponents on—Apocalypse Tanks' cross country speed was far too slow to run for it—and prepared for battle. It never quite came as the enemy tanks stopped short of the series of ridges they would need to overtop to get at the Soviets and waited. Roughly an hour later, High Command finally issued definite orders, and all the Soviet units in the salient began to consolidate their positions against the Allied offensives from all directions instead of counterattacking, fearing getting blindsided by Shepard splitting her forces. The southern front in northern Austria and Hungary in particular got a nasty scare when their supply convoys spotted masses of assault choppers headed for their rear echelons before falling silent, destroyed by rocket pods, anti-tank missiles, and old fashioned gunfire. They shifted most of their mobile anti-air capacity to their north, and the northern front, after getting wind of that chopper group veering north, shifted their Flak Tracks and SAM carriers southward slightly.

In reality, those choppers weren't going to do anything much for now except rocket bombardment. They set down in fields far behind Soviet lines, brought their extra rocket pods outside with the spare wing pylons, and fired of volleys of artillery into the backsides of the Soviet northern and southern lines. The extra pylons could serve to control elevation for impromptu artillery work as well as being used for repairing the choppers. After one synchronized volley, the choppers skedaddled away into hiding. The main point of the distraction was the facilitation of a series of Allied close air support air strikes along the north and south borders of the huge Soviet salient into Central Europe. Instead of Suppression of Enemy Air Defence (SEAD), sometimes Distraction of Enemy Air Defence was more useful and less costly… and had an acronym more indicative of the consequences for the side subjected to it. The same could be said of the main body of SI's forces, sitting under tree cover now and relatively protected from Soviet missiles. They too were serving as just a distraction for now, making the Soviets cautious and paranoid, for good reason given Shepard was known from previous wars to pull all sorts of insane schemes out of her ass.

In fact, the Soviets were so leery that they had ceased V3 fire on the western front line and didn't even strike west to intercept when a detachment of five divisions of SI forces headed south, slashing through Soviet skirmisher elements to supplement Mark's remaining forces. This was an intelligent choice since given the ratio of forces, the Soviets would only stand a chance of more or less withstanding an all-out attack if they were dug in and in full defensive stature. Shepard had indeed been prepared to hit them from the side if they'd advanced to intercept, but this was just as ideal an outcome. The Soviets had prepared to fight to defend their supply lines with the establishment of fortifications and digging in reinforcements as soon as they arrived. SI didn't have any reinforcements coming, and the Soviets seemed smart enough to understand that trying to defend everything gets you nowhere, so they weren't digging in units inside the salient.

There was only one catch to that. The twelve divisions' worth of direct-combat elements left a few pickets behind to snipe Soviet scouts, and simply went away. They roared east and, instead of hitting the Soviet salient's north flank elements from their left flank i.e. the west, swept southeast into the link elements of the Soviet main thrust and its flank elements. They ploughed through into the interior of the salient before starting to systematically level Soviet logistics convoys and reinforcement units being brought up to the front. They reinforcements weren't coming piecemeal, but the groups in question were small enough that nearly eight thousand tanks and even more APCs had no problem tearing them to shreds with acceptable losses. The Soviets' next move was predictable and obvious to even those who were fairly bad at strategy, although it still took until High Command gave the orders for them to do it. They left the infantry and some defending elements in the defence lines on all three sides, backed by stationary fortifications, and converged all units on the centre to surround and destroy the intruders. They had only overlooked one "minor" problem.

Out on the relatively clear land of Austria and Hungary, and even Poland for that matter, even though there were plenty of hills and valleys, they were gentle enough that SI armoured units could use close to their top speed. Yes, it tore up a lot of farmland and yes, the tracks were glaringly obvious (not that even going at minimum speed would not have been with so many vehicles concentrated in a particular area) but the speed was higher than that of the Soviets. In other words, they smashed headlong into the Soviet strategic reserve units to the east. The choppers that had hidden themselves in the east behind the Soviet strategic reserve in several valleys swarmed the rear and sides of the Soviet reserves. Even though the Soviets had received word they were there and had done their best to prepare, their forces hadn't been adequate with their Kirov flying fortress screen put out of commission by Allied fighter wings.

Shepard's units hadn't slowed much to fire with the exception of the T-1965s tasked with taking care of the Apocalypse Tanks, and so they had effectively evaded being sandwiched themselves. They had also drawn the Soviet forces from the front lines of the salient. By the time the Soviet High Command, overloaded by reports coming from all fronts, reversed the convergence order and allowed the Soviet units to rush back toward their old front lines, the northern and southern fortifications of the salient had already fallen and the western fortifications were under threat of being cut off by the crushing allied advance. At the same time the remaining troops (about 80% of the initial forces sent) from the twelve divisions Hannah had sent through the gap struck the rear right flank of the Soviets' northern forces. In the past, such a breakthrough would have taken the majority of a day or more to accomplish. Now, the pace of war was much faster and it took only a matter of hours to essentially doom the Soviet salient to failure. The soviets had realized this, but their over-reliance on centralized command meant it would be a couple hours—and one hell of a lot of total havoc—before they were allowed to pull back their remaining forces.

While that had gone well, the distraction attacks that had made Soviet High Command so indecisive in the first place had not all yielded good results for the Allies…

* * *

A/N: Review Replies!

**Nenfaer**, I was considering that for a similar ratio of dimensions using similar materials, the air resistance would increase with square of diameter, the fuel capacity and payload would increase with the cube of the diameter. Of course gravity also has an effect, but that's why it's not that much more max range (45 km vs 40 km) compared to the newest BM-21 rockets in our reality. And you can only order a few vehicle components, namely those most likely to wear out like various seals, glass parts, etc.

**Bruto22**: Not planning on falling into that trap.

REVIEW!


	8. In Other News…

A/N: I am aware the space between posting Ch 6 and 7 was 29 days. I doubt it will be as long again as I am slowly getting tired of playing SC2 online as it is highly repetitive after a while.

So what sort of characteristics do you think I should give Agent Guardian? I think he's going to basically be me except with occasional writer's block (phases of being unable to write his usually perfectly accurate narration of the future/present/past), much to the annoyance of the Shepard he works for.

* * *

Chapter 8: In Other News…

_Near Vladivostok, late August, 1982_

When High Command (read: Yuri) wasn't trying to micromanage everything, Soviet generals, in this case Vladimir Gregorovich, could in fact be reasonably competent, as the Allies discovered painfully when trying an amphibious invasion near Vladivostok. Soviet Victor-class nuclear attack subs surviving from the attempt to invade Hawaii and their much smaller Typhoon conventional submarine cousins were put to good use. They managed to torpedo many of the ships in the invasion flotilla from long range, firing their torpedoes using pre-set run ranges before actively seeking targets. Allied "destroyers" brought by the Koreans and Japanese were inadequate, and even the larger non-cheap-deployment ships were having a hard time keeping the sea lanes reasonably clear.

As soon as the distraction force landed very close to Vladivostok they ran into fierce resistance from more than half of the Soviet Far East Theatre's forces. The two Japanese SDF divisions landing at Red beach were attacked by vastly superior Soviet forces and completely destroyed within ten minutes of hitting the beaches with less than a one to one loss ratio despite Allied naval support fire. The four South Korean Army divisions landing at Blue Beach to the northeast came under V3 fire as soon as they started trying to put up prefab buildings to establish a beachhead base. Soviet anti-ship missile launchers jury-rigged from salvaged parts from the ships sunk in the Vladivostok harbour after the Hawaiian campaign ripple-fired toward the Japanese and Korean ships out at sea, and countermeasures plus Phalanx close-in weapons systems could only do so much.

The Phalanx had several advantages compared to the SI standard dual 20mm gun mount. It was self-contained and easy to replace, whereas the "Dual-Twenty" was linked directly to a magazine room. Yes, these mounts were attached to special magazine rooms that didn't have enough height to accommodate rockets and the like, but they were still large enough to hold many of the gigantic ammunition drums used for the anti-missile guns. The problem was that the Dual-Twenty burned rounds much faster than the Phalanx, at 9000 rounds per minute total instead of 4500 (2 guns versus 1). As a result the turret's ammunition chains typically linked directly down into the rotating airlock part of the magazine where several drums would be linked up in sequence for the gun to use up. The seal mechanism was fairly minimal to keep the flow going smoothly from both chains, and the rotating magazine section was to ensure the chains didn't become tangled in each other and break. The Phalanx had no such awkward rig-ups or potential for a magazine explosion, though it carried a fixed 1550 rounds in its ammunition storage. The Phalanx also elevated far faster at 115 degrees per second compared to 80 for the Dual-Twenty, and weighed much less.

This did not however come without significant downsides. The Phalanx had a noticeably slower traverse rate laterally since its mounts were not of a type generally used for much heavier equipment, traversing 115 degrees per second up to 150 degrees either way. The Dual-Twenty offered 360-degree free rotation at up to 180 degrees per second. There was also the minor fact that since the Dual-twenty had counter-rotating guns, their rounds converged after some distance depending on the gun angles (usually angled outward from each other slightly to delay convergence) whereas the Phalanx, as normal of all rotary guns, suffered slight drift after a long enough flight. Both six-barrelled 2omm rotary guns spun at a rate of 12.5 revolutions per second, which, calculating with a 12cm diameter between the centerlines of barrels, would mean a lateral velocity of 4.7 metres per second (versus a forward velocity of 1100 metres per second, this was effectively 4 milliradians off-target). This was significant in terms of missile interceptions even though round flight time was typically around half a second or sometimes even less, so the computers had to constantly adjust. The Phalanx's ammunition also cost more as it used specialized tungsten sabots while the Dual-Twenty used cheap APHE slugs. Phalanxes would engage targets even when it was silhouetted against a friendly vessel, the Dual-Twenty would not do this unless the target was on terminal approach, the default was manually overridden, or contact was lost with the fire control computers in the Combat Information Centre. In that case friend-or-foe designations would no longer be stored or used and any target that met the criteria for an inbound threat could be fired on. However, without IFF, manual designation by the turret crew was required for smaller boats on approach unless the default was overridden.

The basic point was that the Phalanx was easier to repair or replace while the Dual-Twenty was overall more capable, faster-reloading, and logistically _vastly_ more demanding in terms of raw ammunition expenditure. Given that the Dual-Twenty did not guarantee total protection against anti-ship missiles, it was not exceedingly unexpected that the Phalanx didn't guarantee protection either. Yes, many of the missiles were shot down, but given the small number of larger warships presently operated by the Japanese and Korean navies that actually mounted CIWS guns, it was still a catastrophe for the Allied invasion attempt as most of them took hits. Most began to list sharply after rocking away from the explosions of the very heavy warheads (either 750 kg or one ton for the P-700 and P-500 respectively), while some others broke their backs outright after being hit by too many missiles and began to settle in the water.

Soviet Typhoons moved in, firing torpedoes in volleys, with Sea Scorpion attack boats unloading their flak cannons to keep the skies clear of combat drones from the cheap-deployment "destroyers". The Scorpions were doing a reasonable job evading the howitzer shells of the "destroyers" as they inflicted damage against the Allied ships, and their anti-sub decoys were drawing off most of the relatively few Mark 46 torpedoes actually managed to get a lock on the shallow-displacement vessels. The cheap-deployment "cruisers" the Allies had brought were incapable of surface-attack as the missiles didn't have a manual TV-guidance option, so they were only being used for anti-missile duty at the moment with their anti-air missile batteries. The Soviet commander hadn't deployed any "dreadnought" missile ships and had ceased firing V3s once he realized it was currently inefficient to waste his available ammunition with enough "cruisers" around shooting his missiles down as often as they were doing. The allied cheap-deployment "carriers" (technically designated as amphibious assault air support ships) were quite grounded with the flak raking the space above their decks, forbidding their fragile VTOL drones from going anywhere.

The only use any Allied cheap-deployment ship but "destroyers" were at the moment was manually ramming Soviet ships, but as the Allied admiral in command said to the general in command of the landings, "Scorpions are too fast and nimble for any but the dumbest captains to fail to dodge our ships—" He had been punctuated here by a crunch and several noisy explosions as a Scorpion WAS run over, by a "carrier" no less. "That doesn't count."

Indeed, regardless of their relatively small losses, the Soviets managed to effectively drive the Allies into the sea after thirty hours of fighting to dislodge the last Republic of Korea Army elements from the eastern beaches. Due to the priority targeting of larger warships by P-500 and P-700 anti-ship missiles, they had been able to take out almost all the CIWS-equipped ships early on. Then they hounded the quick-deployment boats, which only had missiles for defence, missiles that were less efficient at quickly scoring multiple kills on close-by, directly-inbound, high-speed targets than guns. They had sunk half the cheap-deployment fleet by the time CIWS support was re-established over them and cut the casualty rates sharply as they fled for the SROK coast. Pursuit of the escaping Japanese and Korean warships ceased when the Soviets picked up the signatures of the East Coast Fleet of the Socialist Republic of Korea Self-Defence Force prowling the waters. A couple momentary exchanges later the Soviet units turned and headed back to their coastal waters where they would have the advantage of shore weaponry support.

Sea Scorpions were smart enough—or the Far East Theatre Commander was smart enough—to not run too close to the SI warships. Their medium missiles, the anti-ship models, were already inflicting shrapnel and shock damage even with the defensive flak the smaller boats were putting up. A hit by such a missile was usually a death sentence to any Soviet cheap-deployment ship short of a Dreadnought (but if it managed to light off a magazine fire…), and even for shipyard-built Soviet ships, it was usually a nasty injury. On top of that, the addition of rapid-fire, ECM-resistant, shorter-range light multipurpose missiles would have been far too much for the Scorpions. Clearing out the attack boats would mean the Allied cheap-deployment ships would have been able to launch their drones for battle against the subs. That would be bad for the Soviets, so the Soviets used the best stratagem of all: RUN.

They also didn't want to have to deal with 600mm heavyweight torpedoes or cluster torpedoes, anti-submarine rocket artillery, and chopper-mounted firepower (the ship-mounted missiles could clear the Scorpions out so Allied fliers could do damage), but that was another matter entirely. The North Korean ships were also hesitant to engage the Soviets or pursue and try to overtake, since in the brief skirmishes they'd taken some damage. They just didn't have quite the numbers to go head to head with the remaining elements of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, which had been bolstered by rapid-assembly forces. Yes, the latter had sped ahead, but nonetheless fell under the SAM umbrella of the other ships so flying the choppers at more than very low altitudes would be suicide. The North Korean Coast Guard, as they were officially called, had lost a Corvette already from the missiles inbound on them. The CIWS systems (guns and Light Missile Launchers) were working as best they could, but they weren't foolproof. Quite a few Patrol Boats (the 1975 generation rendition of the classic SI Attack Boat) had also been lost.

Even with emergency repairs, one damaged Corvette, struck by two P-700 missiles near the bow, sank before it reached Wonsan harbour, the main east coast harbour for the North Korean Coast Guard. Yes, it was well within P-500 and P-700 range of Vladivostok, but so was most of the Sea of Japan, and this positions allowed many opportunities for intercept of the missiles along the way. The South Korean and Japanese units, those that remained, underwent some basic repairs at Wonsan before returning home to continue the blockade keeping the Soviets in the Sea of Japan.

* * *

_Baltic Sea, late August, 1982_

The Battle of the Baltic was one of the few recorded instances when an Allied force had to bail out one of SI's task forces and not the other way around. The Patrol Boat and Corvette fleet that had been sent on this mission proved simply inadequate for the task of confronting the Soviet Baltic Fleet. Apparently there was just something decisive in the extra armour protection in the bulkheads of Frigates that offered a multiplier to their survivability that was not granted to the Corvettes. The Frigates attached to the SI Atlantic Tenth Flotilla had been damaged in a daring Soviet commando strike on the harbour of Oslo, a strike that had wrecked several cheap-deployment Allied warships, so they were laid up for repairs. Main gun battery magazine explosions were hardly minor damage, after all, despite blast venting technology dissipating most of the energy.

The SI task force also didn't have the number of cheap, disposable guaranteed-interceptors the Allies could bring to bear—cheap-deployment "carrier" drones were very good for physically blocking missiles apparently, although Scorpion raids often precluded that. Conventional anti-missiles and anti-missile guns could only do so much to thin down the number of anti-ship missiles thrown at them. Yes, they managed to bombard several targets on the coast to draw some Soviet attention away from the South German Salient to some degree or another, but being bum-rushed by Soviet missile boats wasn't exactly high on their list of priorities.

The N-EA-1975A Patrol Boat was designed to serve a similar role to other navies' corvettes and fast-attack boats, succeeding the antique SI Attack Boat in the latter role (and even inheriting its serial designation of EA for Escort, Attack). It mounted, as was typical for SI, high-efficiency but also high-output diesel engines, forgoing gas turbine technology in favour of using different gears and raw power for higher speed dashes. The newest generation of Assault Choppers had employed contra-rotating coaxial blades (with 4 blades per rotor), so they had a smaller footprint than most other choppers of comparable weight. Therefore the designers were able to fit a hangar into the Patrol Boat's stern without demanding a certain orientation of the choppers' blades before they could be lowered through the elevator doors. The Patrol Boat had a length of 75 metres, a beam of 15 metres, and a draught of 4 metres, displacing around 2000 tons at full load. It cruised between 16 to 20 knots and its maximum speed could hit about 43-45 knots on (very) long, (very) straight runs (practical max about 35 knots for safe manoeuvring).

The class was also armed to match other factions' corvettes and approach their frigate levels. It employed the more compact version of the S-WM-20, namely the S-WM-15, to great effect. Two Light Missile Launchers (6-arm design) were present, tubes arranged like the vertices of an octagon with the bottom two missing. These were able to rotate to face directly forward or directly rearwards from their flank positions, and were able to have their missiles arc up over the ship to strike targets on the far side if need be. Two General Purpose (aka "Medium") Missile Launchers were also mounted in 3-arm designs, similarly restricted in rotation as they too were mounted on either side of the superstructure, ahead of the Light Missile Launchers. Closest to the bow among the flank weapons mounts were two 150mm rocket artillery tube sets of 28 each, these were able to actuate somewhat more than 180 degrees, so their fields of fire overlapped in front of the bow. Centerline armament included a 100mm howitzer forward and a Dual-20 TMD gun mount atop the bridge, plus a 600mm torpedo tube in the stern torpedo room. Two 200mm anti-torpedo tubes in that room also helped balance the streamlined tail of the ship against the forward-shifted superstructure (due to the needs of the helicopter deck). There wasn't any space for mission flexibility, unlike heavier SI ships, but they didn't really need it.

Worthy of note was that "Light" Missiles were designed to the diameter of 20 cm, "Medium" missiles were designed to the diameter of 40 cm, and "Heavy" missiles would be anywhere up to a metre across (although generally maxing out around 80 cm). After nasty experiences with the Soviet P-700 anti-ship cruise missile, SI was (finally) getting its own cruise missile programs into gear, although they were working on both a "Medium" and a "Heavy" missile at once. They had originally wanted to wait to see how the American Tomahawk performed, obtain some schematics or working models, test them, and then produce a superior counterpart. Those plans had been flung aside as soon as the first P-700 made contact against an Allied warship's hull and now they were playing catch-up, something they weren't used to and weren't happy about.

The Patrol Boat had originally been designed with a fraction of its current heavy armament, only four General-purpose missile tubes, a Dual-Twenty turret and a couple fixed mounts or plate-mounts for Light Missiles and maybe 200mm torpedoes (using some sort of adaptor) had been considered. The plate-mounts would basically be a piece of hull that could extend outwards with the missile tubes mounted on the bottom, with its own pros and cons compared to normal mounts. However, once the Patrol Boat's role was turned into an even smaller, cheaper version of the Corvette, well, the designers went to town with it. They even installed an active sonar suite in the bow, placing acoustic sensors amidships and in the stern, and added air-search and surface-search radars to the small ships. The computers would have to do without the overall monitoring of a General-Search Radar, but the two installed systems already overlapped slightly, which was enough to get them to work together acceptably. Every missile or rocket mount could be retracted into the hull to reduce the radar signature, and the Air-Search radar could fold up to be 2D-only like on the larger ships. The Patrol Boat's hull was relatively thin, but all its magazines and machinery spaces were behind tank-level armour plating, which offered good protection against naval gunfire and contact-fused missiles. The armour was however about as useful as a wet paper hat against heavy anti-ship warheads that only detonated after penetrating the hull.

This meant the Patrol Boat and Corvette detachment raiding the Baltic coast had been in BIG trouble once the Soviets began flooding their defence grids with heavy anti-ship missiles reprogrammed to attack smaller (within reason) targets first. It also meant that other nations reckoned the three 1975 SI ship designs (Patrol Boat, Corvette and Frigate) to correspond to frigate, destroyer and cruiser classes in their navies. There was some grumbling among SI's naval commanders that they should be re-scaled to portray reality, but that wouldn't roll around until after WWIV. Yes, they did eventually reclassify the boats to something vaguely approaching international standards (re-classed to Corvette, Frigate and Destroyer respectively), but the classes remained (sometimes grossly) over-armed for their later classifications. All this however was a moot point as the Soviets forced the Allies to beat a hasty retreat in the face of an unexpectedly large number of shore missile batteries, leaving behind the sunken hulks of several dozen assorted vessels, only a quarter of which had originally come with the evacuation escort fleet.

The Finns would go un-reinforced until the next year, when the winds of war finally blew in their favour. They would hold throughout the autumn against a comparatively small sector of the Red Army, but their battle lines would collapse on the 22nd of December. After that, the Finns would be reduced to resistance movements that would fight until the liberation of their nation by the Allied Forces.

* * *

_Black Sea and Vicinity, late August, 1982_

The Allies had also launched a surprise attack on the cordon at the mouth of the Black Sea. The blockade was mostly underwater since heavier Soviet surface ships couldn't come too close to the Turkish coast for fear of a mix of Exocet and Harpoon missiles, while the Turks had no desire to send their anti-submarine warfare aircraft out when Scorpions were around. The Allied solution was fairly simple: Send out a fleet of fast-attack craft that were small enough to be resistant to torpedo tracking like the Scorpions were, but also armed enough to take the Scorpions down, and then follow with a combined aerial and cheap-deployment naval assault to take out the subs.

This successfully broke the blockade and allowed the Allies to push into the Black Sea, drawing Soviet High Command's attentions to the Crimea in fear of an Allied amphibious invasion there. However, they should have been more worried about the action on either side of the Black Sea. The Greek and Turkish Army forces had begun an assault into southern Romania and northern Bulgaria from their respective front lines. The Turkish Army managed to advance 30 kilometres before being stopped by amassed Soviet armour defeating their spearhead forces, but they dug in and held on stubbornly until the Greeks arrived. Greeks may have been known as a nation for being lackadaisical in everyday work, but their soldiers still took things seriously enough to get the job done, more or less.

In the meantime, the SI-PSDF-Turkish offensive in the Caucasus had made ample preparations for their breakthrough campaign, namely starting several small avalanches via artillery and thus effectively blocking off several potential routes the Soviets could use to outflank their plans for advance, at least with regards to the passage of heavier tanks. The PSDF commander assigned to the expeditionary force had kept the information about the axes of advance secret except telling the other commanders to have their troops to follow various units of his during the advance.

He, General Ariel Sharon, had called for radio silence as his forces manoeuvred, to make sure no spies could transmit anything without being caught, and if that happened he would issue new orders on the fly so that the Soviets couldn't keep up fast enough, unless one of his division-level officers was a traitor and had told them about the various contingency codes. The army had separated into sections that moved through several major valleys of the Caucasus. Given the mountains were 160 km wide and the mechanized force could make at least 40 km/h in the valleys, they would take four hours to reach the other side. It was complicated slightly by the needs of overcoming Soviet defences, but that had been effectively accomplished by a ferocious artillery barrage over the past two and a half days along many points of the front line.

Sharon's central column was on a route which had not been bombarded, to draw out the alert and trigger-happy Soviet mobile forces. Two Turkish Mountain Infantry divisions had been tasked with moving through two ruined portions of the Soviet line to take up flanking positions on the reverse slopes of the valley's sides, in which were embedded multiple defensive formations of Soviet fortifications and units. Sharon's two other columns would in theory be able to wind around to the enemy's rear in time to hammer down upon them with the Turks providing flanking fire with their man-portable weapons. That depended on the Soviets presuming Sharon was using a tactic of distraction with his central force and that his flank forces were intended to stab deep into the Soviet rear and heavily disrupt operations like the silo raid Shepard had conducted near the end of WWIII. The Soviets would prepare an anvil and a hammer, in theory, and find nothing to hit.

Unfortunately for Sharon, the Soviets caught onto the tactics being used fast enough to stop him from breaching the Caucasus Mountains completely. Fortunately for Sharon, they were too slow when they began repositioning to catch up to his flanking forces,, which were all equipped with SI-built tanks and could thus keep their lead on the T-75s. So the flanking manoeuvre was pulled off almost perfectly, destroying a large mobile Soviet force that had been sent to bolster the defences in the central advance's valley once the front came under attack. The Soviets did however grind his advance to a halt a couple dozen kilometres short of the northern boundary of the Caucasus Mountains, in the foothills. Sharon's response was to overwhelm the Soviets with sheer weight of artillery and prevent the Soviets from disrupting said artillery effectively by stopping their armour with his own. It would take several more weeks before the mountains were securely in Allied hands, but it would end up in Allied hands.

* * *

A/N: We are about to get a momentary glance into the future. Yep, a lot of characters we know and love are going to be showing up… **YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED**.

* * *

_Western Poland, late August, 1982_

Shockingly, the Deutsche Heer advance into western Poland managed to go halfway to Warsaw before encountering serious resistance. It was only apparent _after_ the major pitched battle that pushed the Germans back to the old border and front line, at the Oder River, what had happened. The Soviet Commander's message to High Command was decoded and turned out to be a translated version of a Chinese idiom: "In the field, a general cannot always obey the commands of his lord." It turned out the commander in question had been born in the Far East, near Vladivostok, and so had picked up some aspects of Chinese culture. His name was Mikhail Gorbanovich, but it would only really become known later during the Psychic Dominator Disaster. His eldest daughter would eventually eclipse him in notoriety during the Great Uprising, although in 1982 she was only 7 years old. Her name was Dostya Mikhailova.

A bit of geographical background information must be noted here for the purpose fo teis clash in Poland: Germany had sold its land east of the Oder to Poland at the end of WWII to comply with Allied demands to reduce its territory and to get funds. After WWIII Poland had ceded the land back to Germany as part of the Soviet sphere of influence's reparations to the Allies, but it had been overrun again by the Red Army shortly after WWIV started.

Mikhail had employed drastic measures to stop a potential German advance into Poland, drawing away much of the front-line units into a strategic reserve which he used to meet the Germans head-on in a crescent-shaped deployment. Although his center buckled under the weight and the Germans hadn't been encircled, they had been weakened greatly by his forces smashing in on both their flanks. An attempt to encircle his forces by branching the German forces north and south had been broken through halfway on the north side and the Germans found themselves at risk of being encircled. They beat a hasty retreat after that, leaving several hundred smouldering wrecks of T-1962 and T-1955 tanks, but they had cost Mikhail almost as many tanks and more lighter vehicles than he had cost them. If not for the Kirovs overhead supporting him with their semi-guided gravity bombs able to punch through the reinforced topsides of even Apocalypse Tanks and of course T-1955s, Mikhail estimated the battle would not quite have been a victory.

That led him to another issue, Soviet High Command had been even more incompetent than usual lately, and he suspected it had something to do with that slime-ball Yuri. He'd heard through the grapevine about the mind-control technology deployed in the USA, and he was vaguely alarmed at why no one else thought Yuri could be a danger to the Soviet Union with that ability and technology of his. Perhaps it was because he was one of Premier Romanov's more trusted generals, but Mikhail had no political commissar assigned to watch him, although those tended to belong to Psi-Corps… which was a problem. Mikhail had a feeling Yuri was sabotaging the Soviet war effort on purpose, but to what ends could he possibly be doing this? It seemed Premier Romanov more or less knew of the problem, given Mikhail didn't have any minders following him around, but then why didn't the man do anything about the freak?

Regardless of that, it was his duty to slow down the Allies as much as he could, but if the time came to decisively deal with Yuri, he would not have a problem joining forces with the Allies to deal with the creep. Mikhail hadn't committed any war crimes to date, unlike that bastard Vladimir Gregorovich, so they hopefully wouldn't have too much of a problem with him either. Perhaps this was why Premier Romanov had assigned him to defensive duty in Europe, so that he could be free of war crimes and ready to act against Yuri if need be? Well, he had no problems with that either, hell, he vaguely looked forward to dealing with the psycho. Another question was what the hell had happened to Vladimir? He used to be quite competent, but his performance in this war… well, that repelling of the invasion at Vladivostok had gone well for the man. Mikhail supposed it had something to do with the fact that the man's political commissar i.e. Psi-Corps minder had unfortunately been killed in an "accident" in the harbour before the battle began. However, Mikhail still didn't like the man, although that was mostly for his uncouth methods and carelessness toward collateral damage, so he wasn't decisively against throwing him to the Allies when this farce of a war ended.

He did however have a problem with how _abysmally_ the South German Salient had failed. It threatened his Army Group's safety in Poland with the Allies pursuing the retreating Soviet forces. Mikhail grimaced just at the thought. It wasn't a retreat, it was a damned rout. The best he could do at the moment was move his true reserve forces (not his just-gathered Main Body) south to force the disaster into some semblance of control. After that he could consolidate positions in Poland and Czechoslovakia to defend against the onslaught of Allied forces riding their high of victory. He couldn't retreat from Poland, or the front would become even wider and more untenable as the Baltic states in the USSR, ever agitated with ideas of revolt after the Soviets started this Fourth World War or whatever unfathomable reason, would be almost impossible to hold. That meant holding at least part of Czechoslovakia and hoping the Ukraine could be held by whatever inept fool Yuri elected to install over there.

* * *

_October, 1982_

The Allies took most of September off from offensive operations to recuperate from their losses, excluding Sharon clearing out the Caucasus. The Soviets were also busy reinforcing themselves, so not much happened for that month other than the Soviets trying, and failing, to dislodge Sharon's forces. However, on the second of October, 1982, the US Pacific Fleet launched a full-scale attack against the Soviet Far East Theatre, crushing Soviet defences and their Pacific Fleet with sheer weight of firepower within a single day. At the same time a series of night-time raids on the Kola Peninsula were carried out by American carrier-borne aircraft sailing north of the city of Hammerfest, Norway. Since they were so close to the USSR a heavy escorting task force had been required in addition to the usual non-cheap-deployment escorts attached to a Carrier Task Force. The SI Atlantic Ninth and Tenth Flotillas were assigned to assist the Americans in this task. The Tenth's Frigates had completed repairs and were now back in combat readiness, and more Corvettes and Patrol Boats had been brought up to reconstitute its losses.

Well, they were lucky they brought up more spare ships across the Atlantic than they needed, because they were about to take more losses, as expected given they were at the forward picket positions when the Soviets moved to respond. Now, the Kh-22, also known as the AS-4 Kitchen was a pretty damned old missile system, twenty years old now, but given the Soviets had just adapted it for use on Kirovs, it was still lethal. Its operational range was 600 kilometres and its terminal velocity was Mach 4.6 in high-altitude mode. As a consequence it outranged even the Heavy SAM carried on SI Corvettes and Frigates, and the fire-and-forget system combined with extremely high terminal velocity made it a great threat. Yes, the General-Purpose and Light missile launchers were capable of intercepting missiles moving at such velocities, but their success rate was not high enough, there were just so many of the contacts…

Half the ships in the two flotillas became casualties before the Americans finally sent fighters to chase the Kirovs off, and more than a fifth of the two flotillas' strength laid on the bottom of the frigid Arctic waters by the time they finally finished the mission and turned for home. Hannah Shepard received an angry phone call from her CINCLANT regarding the Americans' hesitance to send air support to intercept the Kirovs. She told him that she would look into it and made a phone call herself from her army's encampment to question what the hell the Americans had been doing. She was less than pleased when she was informed, in more refined terms, that the Americans couldn't spend more than about one second without a large combat air patrol (read: at least two fighters per carrier) over the heads of their fleet while her sailors were dying out there acting as meat shields for said fleet. She abridged politeness when she informed them that "if your fighters are just going to sit there over your heads waiting to take a dump on something near your fleet, then next time you need someone to run interference, ask the British."

The southern European Allies began to advance into the Ukraine, meeting dogged Soviet resistance as the Italian, Spanish and Greek armies ground forward at a snail's pace. None of them were exactly well-suited to Soviet autumns, and the temperature was still dropping. The plan was to force the Soviets out of their current entrenchments along the entire front and force them to work hard to dig more in frozen ground. The Allies would halt the offensive along the whole front before the Russian winter set in and stopped them, in other words, before December arrived. Even though the pace of war was somewhat higher overall than in 1959, the Allies had no delusions about pushing to Moscow on the ground before winter set in and froze them in their tracks. The last time only Shepard's army had still been more than 60% combat-effective by the time winter was over, and they had no desire to see a repeat of that performance, especially in terms of logistics (hauling food and fuel up to the front with heavy tanks was inefficient).

However, they did have an ace up their sleeve this time. It was something Einstein had come up with, and he called it the Chronosphere.

* * *

A/N: Yes, I just introduced the main Soviet commanders of Yuri's Revenge and RA3 Uprising respectively. Now, review replies!

**Nenfaer**: Combat PAVs can fire-and-forget (and yes they can fire on pre-programmed courses and then go into active search), but their range is shorter than AA missiles and missile trails are very obvious when they fly above the forest cover, plus missiles can't easily evade trees for long in flight, so they can't fly _through_ a forest, making it usually much easier (also higher re-fire rate) to just lock on with sensor line of vision (not necessarily line of sight, you just need to have the enemy radar/IR signature clocked in). AA PAVs can't lock onto ground targets… hence manual targeting required for them despite it being not so convenient for Combat models. In total, during that campaign, SI lost 5 out of 19 divisions (2 paratrooper divisions and 17 Field Divisions were in the battle) in manpower an 6 in materials, the Soviets lost about 43 out of 75 divisions along all fronts of the salient, the German/American forces guarding the lab lost 8 of 10 divisions (averaging manpower & material losses), the French and German Army units along the northern front lost 6 divisions, and the Italian, Spanish and Austrian forces lost 6. Total losses are 25:43, not that great for the Allies. Also, some Soviet commanders, like Mikhail are very competent, but with Yuri around… even competent ones (Vladimir was at one point competent) often get turned into idiots.

**Bruto22**: Glad to see you liked it.

REVIEW!


End file.
